Why it is your duty to stop supporting the government → the danger of “feel-good” protests → “symbolic” tax protests? → the “Peace Tax Fund,” legal conscientious objection to military taxation

In yesterday’s Picket Line I had some discouraging things to say about ideas like the “Peace Tax Fund.” In fact, I dismissed them as worthless and wondered why they were so popular in war tax resistance circles.

I decided that I’d better take a closer look and make sure I really understood what I was talking about.

The “Peace Tax Fund” movement is active in something like 17 countries, and bills have been introduced in at least 7 national legislatures to create such funds.

Each bill and campaign is a little different, but they all appear to be essentially the same idea. The U.S. bill “would create a separate fund in the U.S. Treasury that can only be used for any government purpose that is not military in nature. This will allow a CO to check a box on the tax form, like the presidential election fund option, and pay their full tax liability, but have 100% of their tax obligation kept out of any war efforts. The instruction booklet would have an explanatory paragraph about what it means to be a CO. Levels of participation in this fund would be reported to Congress annually, and thus published in the Congressional Record,” says one source. It “will allow legally defined conscientious objectors to pay 100% of their taxes into a separate fund that will be used only for government spending that is not for a military purpose. The level of contribution to this fund will be annually entered into the Congressional Record, and information about the fund will be published in both the tax return form and the instruction booklet. The apportionment powers of Congress will not be restricted while relief of suffering will be granted to tens of thousands otherwise not able to earn above the taxable level of income or otherwise forced to refuse payment of taxes,” says another.

I have tried to identify the benefits of this legislation, as suggested by the campaigns’ promoters:

Sends a Message

• “It will be a watershed event for religious and civil liberties when a major military power acknowledges its citizens have a just claim to freedom of conscience which has been denied.”
• “Each set of federal tax instructions for 160 million U.S. taxpayers would include this information about conscientious objector status.” This would raise public awareness about conscientious objection to war. Also it “would be an educational vehicle that uses the tax form to spread awareness that alternatives to war are sought,” and it “would advertise to the nation and to the world that there is not blanket approval of war and that we have a peaceful minority.” “The level of participation in the Peace Tax Fund would be published in the Congressional Record every year. This information would be the most comprehensive and visible barometer for judging the nation’s conscience in regard to participating in war, and could build momentum toward changing military spending priorities.” “The Peace Tax Fund Bill would be a meaningful step towards raising the national consciousness about misplaced military priorities.”

Signals Government Approval of Conscientiousness

• A “Peace Tax Fund” bill “would restore freedom of religion… to taxpayers whose religious or moral convictions forbid their participation in war” and it “would be another step in the de-criminalization of conscientious objection, broadening the rights of conscience to include objection to military taxation.”

Increases Funds Available to Government

• “There are currently thousands of people of conscience who refuse to pay some or all of their federal income taxes because such money pays for war. The government would receive increased revenue if people of conscience knew their taxes were used only for life-affirming purposes.” The text of the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act introduced into the U.S. Congress includes a section that reads: “the Joint Committee on Taxation has certified that a tax trust fund, providing for conscientious objector taxpayers to pay their full taxes for non-military purposes, would increase Federal revenues.”
• “It is important to recognise that diverted tax would not affect the defence budget, which would be set in the normal way.”

Relieves Suffering of War Tax Resisters

• It would relieve the suffering of current war tax resisters, who would be able to go back to a legal, above-board, taxpaying life or earn a taxable income.

Miscellaneous

• “It would provide standing for any future legislation introduced to promote peace and social justice, and would stand as an argument against increased military spending.”
• “As a legal precedent, this would allow previously lost Court cases to be appealed.”

My most basic objection to this set of points is that I don’t believe that a bill that allows the government to have more money and to spend as much of it as it would like to on war is anything like a step in the right direction or anything war tax resisters ought to waste their time on. My secondary objection is that quite clearly some war tax resisters would indeed be deceived into feeling that they could again pay taxes with a clear conscience if a “peace tax bill” were passed — while in reality nothing in the moral equation would have changed. There’s no virtue in further clouding the moral challenge of taxation in this way.

Many of these other alleged benefits seem either unlikely or not worth these negative results. The symbolic, message-sending benefits are the most plausible, but seem just as attainable without the benefit of an act of Congress.

Only one page of the many I visited when searching for information on these “peace tax funds” even attempted to squarely address the most glaring flaws of the campaign:

“Conscientious objection to military taxation would legally parallel conscientious objection to military service. The work performed by conscientious objectors during the draft did not result in fewer soldiers going to war. Likewise, the tax dollars contributed by conscientious objectors to the Peace Tax Fund would not change budgetary priorities. Yet this does not diminish the power of either moral stand.”

But this is not accurate. When someone declared himself a conscientious objector that person did not take up arms and kill. Perhaps somebody else was drafted to do so instead, this is true, but that person, the conscientious one, did not. A “peace tax fund” payer, on the contrary, pays just as much money as the non-fund payer, but just cherishes the illusion that her dollars were peaceful ones. It would be as if the government told conscientious objectors that they had to take up arms and shoot at the enemy just like everybody else, but that they didn’t have to take credit for their kills if they didn’t want to.

The government can’t solve your moral dilemma for you by making a separate slot above the basket for conscientious people to pass their taxes through. That’s just silly, and makes “conscientious” people look not conscientious at all but naïve and easily bought-off.

So what are the alternatives?

Whether or not a “peace tax fund” is enacted, the basic problem of not wanting to contribute to activities you think are immoral remains the same, and tax resistance continues to be a good response to that problem. If the idea of a “peace tax fund” is attractive to you, I would suggest not waiting for the government to create one for you, but to go ahead and donate money directly to charities that you consider valuable. If merely the illusion of having paid taxes that were only used for peaceful purposes is enough for you, visualize every dollar that you paid going directly into the budget for your favorite government program (you can do this even without a “peace tax fund” bill and it will mean just as much).

Last night I heard war tax resisters Nick Wright and Lorin Peters speak at a meeting organized by Northern California War Tax Resistance.

Peters was back from Hebron, where he’d been working with Christian Peacemaker Teams, and he shared photos and observations about his time there.

Peters says his tax resistance has become more confrontational in recent years, moving from a mostly-symbolic refusal to pay the phone tax to “what Gene Sharp would call ‘withdrawal of consent.’ ” Today Peters has adopted complete non-cooperation with the IRS — he refuses to file, and instead sends letters explaining his reasons. “We’re entering an era of ‘spiritual warfare,’ ” Peters says, “the political process is bankrupt.”

Nick Wright had attended the 10^th International Conference on War Tax Resistance and Peace Tax Campaigns in Brussels this past July, and reported back about this conference.

I arrived a little late and so I missed the first part of Wright’s talk, but here are some items from the notes I took:

• Wright was impressed with the Conscience UK group, which he thought was the most “slick” of the groups represented at the conference, and the one that had the broadest focus in terms of war tax resistance in general.
• Most other groups had a more narrow focus on Peace Tax Funds or other forms of official accommodation for conscientious objectors, although most of the peace tax campaigners were also war tax resisters.
• Peace Tax Fund advocates acknowledge that there are objections to their program within the war tax resistance movement, however Wright found that at this conference there was near-unanimity about the value of a Peace Tax Fund-like program. It is seen as a winnable battle, and potentially a valuable tool that war tax resisters can use.
• The most high-profile peace tax campaign going on these days is that of the Peace Tax Seven in the UK.
• Some Italian war tax resisters have had success in pursuing the conscientious objector argument in the courts, and apparently are paying a portion of their taxes to non-governmental organizations with the blessing of some judges. These cases haven’t yet been brought to higher courts, however.
• Some people who are lobbying the government or international bodies (including multiple UN human rights bodies and overlapping multi-nation European meta-governments) to try to enact some official accommodation for conscientious objectors to military taxation feel that they are unable to become war tax resisters because such “lawless” actions would hurt their credibility with those they are lobbying.
• The Quaker Council for European Affairs is trying to push for an acknowledgment of conscientious objection to military taxation as a human right in the Council of Europe (which is a larger body than the European Union and is apparently more amenable to such an argument).
• The Peace Tax Fund bill being considered by the U.S. Congress has a similarly tight definition of “conscientious objector” as that used to categorize people for military service by draft boards — that is, to qualify as a “conscientious objector” a taxpayer must be “opposed to participation in war in any form based upon the taxpayer’s deeply held moral, ethical, or religious beliefs or training.” Non-pacifists who nonetheless conscientiously object to the way their money is being spent on wasteful, reckless belligerence would not qualify.
• Best slogan from the discussion: “War Tax Resistance — it’s a direct action you do every day.”

Accountancy Age takes a look at the “Peace Tax Seven” case and weighs the case for “hypothetication” — that is, individual taxes for individual spending line-items (for instance, a “military tax” that covers military spending).

In response to my critique of the Peace Tax Fund bill that I posted here yesterday, someone responded:

The Peace Tax Fund would not achieve anything “real” until enough had checked the box to actually make it impossible for Congress to fund the Pentagon to the extent it wished. That is an interesting possibility, however, and would be a direct gauge of a war’s popularity on a year-to-year basis. A so-called just war would see just the true pacifists — and we all know we are a very slender slice of the citizenry — checking the Peace Tax Fund. A highly unpopular war might actually produce millions of such reactions. Would that have an effect? Possibly.

This brings up a couple of issues. One is that the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act does in fact restrict the use of the “Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund” to those taxpayers who are “designated conscientious objectors” — a category that includes only a taxpayer

who is opposed to participation in war in any form based upon the taxpayer’s deeply held moral, ethical, or religious beliefs or training (within the meaning of the Military Selective Service Act (50 U.S.C. App. 450 et seq.), and who has certified these beliefs in writing to the Secretary of the Treasury in such form and manner as the Secretary provides.

I had a heck of a time tracking down this “50 U.S.C. App. 450 et seq.” but I think this is the important part:

Nothing contained in this title [sections 451 to 471a of this Appendix] shall be construed to require any person to be subject to combatant training and service in the armed forces of the United States who, by reason of religious training and belief, is conscientiously opposed to participation in war in any form. As used in this subsection, the term “religious training and belief” does not include essentially political, sociological, or philosophical views, or a merely personal moral code.…

So if the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund bill becomes law, only those taxpayers who “by reason of religious training and belief” are “opposed to participation in war in any form” will be able to take advantage of its provisions.

The first half of this qualification isn’t as daunting as it may first appear, since the courts, in their reluctance to get their hands dirty in deciding what sorts of religious beliefs are worthy and which are not, have allowed a lot of pretty vague and individualistic spiritual bents to qualify as “religion” for the purposes of such a test. The second half, though, pretty much locks out all but the committed pacifist. Keep that in mind.

Now, just to satisfy curiosity, let’s see how many such pacifists there would have to be in the United States for the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund bill “to actually make it impossible for Congress to fund the Pentagon to the extent it wished.”

The bill would establish a “Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund” that would receive all taxes paid by these conscientious objectors, and the money in this fund “shall be allocated annually to any appropriation not for a military purpose.”

MILITARY PURPOSE — For purposes of this Act, the term “military purpose” means any activity or program which any agency of the Government conducts, administers, or sponsors and which effects an augmentation of military forces or of defensive and offensive intelligence activities, or enhances the capability of any person or nation to wage war, including the appropriation of funds by the United States for—

1. the Department of Defense;
2. the Central Intelligence Agency;
3. the National Security Council;
4. the Selective Service System;
5. activities of the Department of Energy that have a military purpose;
6. activities of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration that have a military purpose;
7. foreign military aid; and
8. the training, supplying, or maintaining of military personnel, or the manufacture, construction, maintenance, or development of military weapons, installations, or strategies.

A while back, the National Priorities Project conducted a break-down of the federal budget that gives a fairly good idea of what would fall in this “military purpose” category. I use their numbers rather than the numbers gathered by the War Resisters League because the WRL includes veterans benefits and a portion of the interest on the national debt as military expenses, while the National Priorities Project and the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund bill do not.

The National Priorities Project estimates that “[m]ilitary spending consumes 26 cents out of every individual income tax dollar. It makes up about 20% of total federal spending and over half of the discretionary budget.”

A simple way of looking at the Peace Tax Fund is that the government sets up two sources of money in the treasury. One, the Peace Tax Fund, can only be spent on non-military purposes. The other one, the “general fund,” can be spent on anything.

The only way this would actually have an effect on military spending is if the general fund becomes smaller than the amount spent on the military. If that happens, the government would either have to borrow money to make up the difference (which they certainly could do) or dip into the Peace Tax Fund (which would be illegal) or reduce military spending (which would be grand).

So the question is: How many people would have to become conscientious objectors to military taxation for this to happen?

If, for simplicity’s sake, we assume that likely conscientious objectors to military taxation currently pay on average about the same amount of taxes as everyone else, in order to cut in to that 26% of every tax dollar that is spent for military purposes, more than 74% of these taxpayers would have to declare themselves conscientious objectors, who “by reason of religious training and belief” are “opposed to participation in war in any form.”

Nowhere near three-quarters of Americans feel this way, and so the law will have no effect at all on the military budget. Furthermore, if three-quarters of Americans did feel this way, there would be no need for such a silly law in the first place as we would all already either be living productive and sane lives in a peaceful tomorrow of harmony and understanding, or living in barbed-wire collective labor camps under the control of our foreign overlords, depending on your brand of speculative fiction.

So if you do support the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund bill, don’t do so because you think it might some day deprive the missile-makers and war profiteers of their turn at the feeding pail. That just isn’t going to happen.

Says Steven Douglas Smith in his new paper Taxes, Conscience, and the Constitution:

It was often claimed in the founding period — and it is claimed today by jurists like Justice Souter and by scholars like Noah Feldman — that citizens have a right of conscience not to pay taxes that will be used to advance religious teachings which they do not believe. But advocates of this position typically reject the corresponding claim that citizens have a right of conscience not to pay taxes that will be used to advance non-religious (or, in their view, anti-religious) teachings in which they do not believe. Are these positions reconcilable? This essay investigates the question and concludes that they are not. Nor is it a tenable position to hold that conscience is violated by the use of a citizen’s tax dollars to promote any beliefs, religious or non-religious, that particular taxpayers reject. So jurists and scholars would do well to drop the selective and opportunistic appeal to the ostensible connection between taxes and conscience.

Some excerpts from Pressure Through Law by Richard Rawlings & Carol Harlow summarize the beginnings of the quest to legalize a form of conscientious objection to military taxation — what is now seen in the Peace Tax Fund movement and the Peace Tax Seven.

The Peace Pledge Union (PPU), founded in 1934 by the Revd Dick Sheppard, was discussing the possibility of a “war tax resistance” campaign by 1937. PPU’s interest stemmed from prosecution of members for failure to pay income tax and Sheppard wished to establish a general defence of conscientious objection. Though the defense was tried by individuals, the idea of “tackling the Income Tax question on a grand scale” lapsed with Sheppard’s untimely death in the same year…. After the Second World War, however, the question was brought onto the agenda by the Quakers, again contesting income tax assessments.…

In Cheney v. Conn (1968), a Quaker assessed for income tax put up the defence that the assessment was illegal because a portion would be used for armament — an unlawful purpose. Not surprisingly, the defence failed on the ground that the words of the Finance Act were unambiguous. Some years later, the Quakers tried to move the argument on to new ground, bringing in the Genocide Convention and Genocide Act 1969. Their case was lost in the Court of Appeal where, on the same day, a similar case based on an alleged violation of a fundamental civil right to protest was also lost (Langran v. Hayler, Surrendan v. Hibbs (1985)). In parallel actions Quakers filed applications in the European Commission of Human Rights under Article 9 of the European Convention (freedom of conscience). The Commission too was unresponsive, holding the applications inadmissible…

About the same time the Peace Pledge Union was running a similar campaign. In 1982, after some reluctance, Council had finally resolved to contest PPU’s liability to pay tax on behalf of its employees… This, the longest running tax resistance case, gained the PPU substantial publicity but was eventually lost in Bloomsbury County Court…

Yesterday I wrote up some of my impressions of the opening day of last weekend’s NWTRCC meeting in Las Vegas.

I took notes on-and-off through the remainder of the meeting and today I’ll write up those things I remember that might be of interest.

The New Pamphlet I’ve Been Working On

I was at the meeting in part to present a first draft of a new edition of NWTRCC’s “Practical War Tax Resistance” pamphlet #5 on low-income / simple-living as a war tax resistance technique. On Friday night we distributed a few copies of this draft and over the course of the weekend I had a chance to sit down with a number of people and listen to their suggestions for improvement. (If you would like to review the document, send me email and I’ll send you a copy of the draft.) I’m aiming to have a final draft ready in about a month, and with any luck we’ll have our new edition back from the press early next year.

Not Much Evidence of a Tax Resistance Groundswell

Despite the growing anti-war sentiment in the country, there has been no evidence of a corresponding groundswell of interest in war tax resistance. For the most part, people reported that their local groups were treading water in terms of membership and outreach. There was more resignation than frustration expressed on this point, as most of us have become used to being, as we’d characterize it anyway, well ahead of the curve on this. Many people also expressed that they often hear about lone-wolf tax resisters who for whatever reason never feel the need to align themselves with tax resistance organizations, so that the actual number of tax resisters is hard to gauge.

Survey in Progress

Earlier this year, NWTRCC started conducting a survey, informally, often at rallies, protests, and other activist events, to get a feel for what makes people choose or avoid tax resistance, and to do some concept testing of a possible large-scale one-year tax resistance campaign.

Of the few hundred people who have responded to the survey thus far, 47% are not doing any tax resistance now, and of that group, 61% would “consider participating in a one-year commitment to refuse a portion of your federal income taxes and redirect your taxes to a humanitarian cause if thousands joined you publicly” on a particular date.

All this sounds pretty good, and we plan to continue the survey into Spring of next year, but even if we find a potential for this sort of tax resistance avalanche, NWTRCC alone doesn’t really have the resources to organize and launch it. My hope is that we can package these persuasive survey results along with offers of our own specialized expertise and sell the idea of such a campaign to one of the larger national anti-war groups who could launch a campaign like this in a heartbeat if they cared to. My own feeling is that this sort of thing is exactly the sort of sustained nationwide civil disobedience campaign the peace movement has been looking for; they just don’t know it yet.

Phone Tax Resistance Going Out of Style

Phone tax resistance has been a useful way of getting potential resisters to take the first step. It’s pretty easy to do, and the risks are very low, and so many tax resisters have gotten their feet wet in this way. However the proliferation of phone companies and phone plans, and the recent abolition of the phone tax on long-distance, have muddied the waters a bit. There’s a pretty good chance that the excise tax on local service is on the way to the trash heap as well, so NWTRCC has begun to deemphasize phone tax resistance and the Hang Up On War campaign. We’re still looking for the next “gateway” resistance tactic — any ideas?

Dan Jenkins Tries to Get the Courts to Recognize COMT

Briefly mentioned was Daniel Jenkins’s court appeal in which he is asserting a right to conscientious objection to military taxation under the 1^st Amendment and 9^th Amendment to the Constitution and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The case strikes me as a long shot, but Jenkins seems to be putting a lot of good work into it, and his research into conscientious objection in early American law is interesting.

Better Video Offerings, and a Contest

Some folks are trying to improve NWTRCC’s multimedia educational and persuasive offerings. This is a good thing (our local tax resistance group still uses a slide show made during the Reagan administration, complete with a tape recording that goes “beep” when you’re supposed to flip to the next slide). Alas, I was in a different workshop when this was being discussed, so I didn’t learn as much about this as I could have, but the project also includes a video contest — anyone can enter by producing a short video on the topic of war tax resistance — with cash prizes for the winning entries. I’ll post more details on The Picket Line when the contest officially launches later this month.

A New Flyer on W-4 Resistance

NWTRCC’s produced a new flyer on W-4 resistance (adjusting the withholding allowances on your W-4 form so that your employer sends less of your paycheck to the IRS) that may be helpful to folks who would like to resist their income tax but who find themselves with nothing but a refund to resist when April 15^th comes around.

Tax Resisters and Student Financial Aid

A preliminary fact sheet was distributed that covers the implications for war tax resisters who are participating in student financial aid programs, or whose children are. It’s not ready for publication just yet, but looks like it will be a useful resource when the time comes.

A Report from the International Conference on War Tax Resistance and Peace Tax Campaigns

We also got to read Larry Rosenwald’s report back from the International Conference on War Tax Resistance and Peace Tax Campaigns which was held in Woltersdorf, Germany around the end of October. He was struck by the differences between the tax resistance movement in the United States and its counterparts in the rest of the world (Europe in particular).

In Europe, the movement is focused more on using the law and the courts (national and international) to legalize some form of conscientious objection to military taxation, and less focused on civil disobedience and forms of extralegal conscientious objection. They find it confusing that in the United States there’s both a Peace Tax Fund campaign and an organized war tax resistance movement.

The folks at wiseGeek have tried to extend the “Peace Tax Fund” concept to its natural conclusion: allowing taxpayers to allocate their tax payments to programs of their choice. Personal Tax Earmarking they call it.

It, too, would be largely symbolic and not substantial, but it might have a good educational effect.

Stephen Douglas Smith of the University of San Diego School of Law has written a paper — Taxes, Conscience, and the Constitution — in which he asserts that, whatever the virtues of conscientious tax resistance, there’s nothing in the Constitution that supports it as some sort of right that the government must respect:

It was often claimed in the founding period — and it is claimed today by jurists like Justice Souter and by scholars like Noah Feldman — that citizens have a right of conscience not to pay taxes that will be used to advance religious teachings which they do not believe. But advocates of this position typically reject the corresponding claim that citizens have a right of conscience not to pay taxes that will be used to advance non-religious (or, in their view, anti-religious) teachings in which they do not believe. Are these positions reconcilable? This essay investigates the question and concludes that they are not. Nor is it a tenable position to hold that conscience is violated by the use of a citizen’s tax dollars to promote any beliefs, religious or non-religious, that particular taxpayers reject. So jurists and scholars would do well to drop the selective and opportunistic appeal to the ostensible connection between taxes and conscience.

There have been many attempts to get U.S. courts to recognize a constitutional or implied statutory right to conscientious objection to military taxation, without success.

Daniel Jenkins is trying again, with a new set of arguments that I’ll try to summarize here. Take note: I’m not a lawyer, so I may be missing a lot of legal nuance.

Jenkins’s examination of early war tax resistance in America, “The Liberation of Nathan Swift,” can be found in the book We Won’t Pay!: A Tax Resistance Reader.

In 2001, Jenkins withheld part of his federal income tax from the IRS, putting it instead in an escrow account and informing the IRS that he would surrender it to them on the condition that the money would only be used for non-military spending.

In 2003, the IRS sent Jenkins one of their intent-to-levy letters and Jenkins filed a Collection Due Process request. The IRS quickly denied relief, so Jenkins appealed to the Tax Court, which shot down the appeal in 2005, adding a $5,000 “frivolous filing” penalty to boot.

Jenkins then appealed to the 2^nd Circuit Court of Appeals. Last March, that court upheld the Tax Court’s ruling, and Jenkins asked the Supreme Court to take his appeal.

The state of law and precedent is, as far as I can tell, something like this:

The First Amendment says, in part, that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” So people whose religious beliefs prohibit their participation in certain government programs have asked the courts to exempt them. For instance, in Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972), the Supreme Court ruled that a state compulsory education law violated the freedom of religion of the Amish people who challenged the law, “for the Wisconsin law affirmatively compels them, under threat of criminal sanction, to perform acts undeniably at odds with fundamental tenets of their religious beliefs.”

A challenge to tax laws came a decade later. In U.S. v. Lee (1982), the Supreme Court ruled that the Old Order Amish could not use the same argument to get out of paying Social Security taxes because:

While there is a conflict between the Amish faith and the obligations imposed by the social security system, not all burdens on religion are unconstitutional. The state may justify a limitation on religious liberty by showing that it is essential to accomplish an overriding governmental interest.

And

The tax system could not function if denominations were allowed to challenge it because tax payments were spent in a manner that violates their religious belief. Because the broad public interest in maintaining a sound tax system is of such a high order, religious belief in conflict with the payment of taxes affords no basis for resisting the tax.

When I read this, I thought to myself: “Wait a cotton-pickin’ minute!” Didn’t the Old Order Amish get Congress to craft them a legislative exemption to Social Security way back in 1965? It turns out this exemption only applied to self-employed people. Employers and employees were still liable for FICA, even if they were Old Order Amish.

I would have thought that even this would have blasted a big hole in the argument that the uniform application of the tax laws is “essential” and that “[t]he tax system could not function” without it. After all, if the tax system survived the legislative exception Congress carved out for self-employed Old Order Amish, there’s no reason to expect that it would collapse under the burden of a court-carved exception for the non-self-employed variety. But the Supreme Court thought otherwise.

And that seemed to pretty much shut the door.

But in 1993 Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which instructed the courts to apply “strict scrutiny” to cases “where free exercise of religion is substantially burdened” by the government.

So conscientious objectors to military taxation started trying again. In 1999, the 2^nd and 3^rd Circuit Courts of Appeal turned down appeals that recrafted the old conscientious objection to military taxation legal arguments to see if they could be slipped in under the new Religious Freedom Restoration Act standard. Both circuits said “no dice,” and in 2000 the Supreme Court decided not to review these decisions.

And that’s where that stood.

In 2006, the Supreme Court decided Gonzales v. O Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal. União do Vegetal is a religious group that uses ayahuasca in their ceremonies, a hallucinogenic tea that contains dimethyltryptamine, a substance banned by federal law. The group challenged the application of that law to the participants in their ceremonies, basing their challenge on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The government responded that, as with the tax law in Lee, the uniform enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act was essential to an overriding governmental interest.

Last year the Supreme Court ruled, unanimously, that the government was wrong, and that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act requires the government to carve out an exception to the Controlled Substances Act to accommodate the religious practices of União do Vegetal because the government had failed to show that the uniform enforcement of the Act was sufficiently essential to a sufficiently compelling governmental interest.

So when Jenkins filed his 2^nd Circuit appeal, he used the O Centro ruling to try and distinguish his 1^st Amendment / Religious Freedom Restoration Act arguments from those that the same circuit rejected in 1999.

One problem with this, that the court pointed out when it rejected Jenkins’s appeal, is that when the Supreme Court decided O Centro, it explicitly distinguished the case before it from the 1982 tax case Lee. The Court said that in contrast to the current case, Lee showed “that the Government can demonstrate a compelling interest in uniform application of a particular program by offering evidence that granting the requested religious accommodations would seriously compromise its ability to administer the program” and that the tax code was such a program.

Jenkins hopes he can convince the Supreme Court to take another look at Lee, which was decided on Constitutional grounds, and see if its logic still holds up under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act’s standards. He wants the court to view the question this way: Does Lee, or the logic of the circuit courts that relied on Lee, give the IRS a blanket exemption from the Religious Freedom Restoration Act when the Act itself does not allow for such an exemption? If not, then his case should be decided on the merits, which requires a closer look at the extent to which his religious beliefs are violated by the law, and the extent to which accommodating those beliefs would compromise the IRS’s ability to collect taxes.

He’s got another argument, too, that’s very interesting, but I’m on much shakier ground in trying to summarize it because it relies on the Ninth Amendment, where even lawyers and judges fear to tread. This amendment reads:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

This could mean anything or nothing, depending on who you ask. Jenkins hopes that there’s a majority on the Supreme Court who are ready to give the Ninth Amendment some teeth. Appealing to the Court’s conservative majority, Jenkins, in his Supreme Court petition, encourages them to interpret this amendment as über-conservative jurist Robert Bork suggested:

Ninth Amendment scholars propose giving content to its promise to preserve unenumerated rights by looking to this country’s history and tradition. For example, in The Tempting of America: The Political Seduction of the Law (The Free Press 1990), Robert Bork observes that “[t]he Ninth Amendment appears to serve a parallel function [to the Tenth Amendment’s guarantee of federalism] by guaranteeing that the rights of the people specified already in the state constitutions were not cast in doubt by the fact that only a limited set of rights was guaranteed by the federal charter.”

Jenkins then goes on to argue that “that the individual right of religious conscience not to be compelled to participate in or support military activity was well recognized at the founding of this nation. For example, the New York State Constitution of 1777, which predates and is independent of the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights, expressly protects persons with ‘scruples of conscience’ from forced military service and requisition for armament. The constitutions of other colonial states also contain liberty of conscience guarantees and religious exemptions from the ‘bearing of arms’. This constitutional right of conscientious objection was preserved by the states at least until the formation of the first permanent national army. It was also preserved and protected by the actions of the early Congress and by the Civil War Congress that instituted the first federal universal military service draft.”

Jenkins has done an impressive amount of research into the history of conscientious objection to military taxation in the United States (see, for instance, The Liberation of Nathan Smith). With this, he hopes to prove that conscientious objection to military taxation was among the “rights… retained by the people” at the time the Constitution was ratified. But for this to work as a legal argument, the Supreme Court not only has to find this evidence compelling, but has to accept Jenkins’s invitation to wade into the Ninth Amendment — something that Court has generally been averse to.

War Resisters’ International, which is based in London, stopped withholding a portion of its employees’ paychecks for war taxes. They are hoping, along with the Peace Tax Seven, to force some sort of legal recognition of conscientious objection to military taxation.

They’ve recently published on-line the letter they sent to Inland Revenue explaining their tax resistance.

These excerpts can also be found in the book American Quaker War Tax Resistance.

In January, 1864, in the middle of the United States Civil War, the United States Senate met and debated, among other things, Quaker conscientious objection. They didn’t seem to be particularly well-informed as to the extent of or the reason for Quaker objection to paying military fines, but it’s interesting how much attention they gave the subject at such a time.

The following amendment to the conscription law was being considered:

That ministers of the gospel and members of religious denominations conscientiously opposed to the bearing of arms, and who are prohibited from doing so by the rules and articles of faith and practice of said religious denomination, may, when drafted into the military service, be considered non-combatants, and shall be assigned by the Secretary of War to do duty in the hospitals, or to the care of freedmen, or shall pay the sum of $300 to such person as the Secretary of War shall designate to receive it, to be applied to the benefit of the sick and wounded soldiers; and such drafted persons shall then be exempt from draft during the time for which they shall have been drafted.

John C. Ten Eyck

“We must not only relieve them from the draft, but from the liability of paying the commutation money”

Senator John C. Ten Eyck of New Jersey told his colleagues that this would not go far enough to satisfy Quaker conscientious objectors:

One of the objects of the amendment is to relieve the religious Society of Friends from the burden of this bill, and the Senator from Rhode Island has stated very truly the difficulties to which members of that society have been heretofore subjected, and the persecutions, to adopt his language, that have been heaped upon them in regard to the performance of military service. If we intend to do them a favor and to relieve them from the consequences of this act, I respectfully submit that we must go further. We must not only relieve them from the draft, but from the liability of paying the commutation money, for I have always understood that Friends, as they call themselves, not only object to the performance of military service, but to the payment of any fine or commutation in lieu thereof; and many of them, even who were possessed of large estates, have lain for months in jail rather than violate what they understood to be a principle of their faith by paying a miserable fine of from one to five dollars for not discharging military duty under the militia system in the several States. I think it will not reach or answer the purpose that certain gentlemen have in view, to so amend this bill as to relieve them from the discharge of military service by the payment of the commutation. In all the petitions and in all the proceedings as published coming from this very large respectable class of citizens in the United States, I have seen the objection raised to both features of the bill, and, to adopt their language, they bear testimony as strongly against the payment of the money as they do against going into the field.

So, without stating how I shall vote myself upon this amendment, I suggest that if we design to respect their conscientious scruples and to relieve them on account of them, we must relieve them also from the payment of the commutation money. When this matter was before the Senate a year ago, I voted against relieving them.

James Harlan

“They say, ‘We might as well bear arms as hire a man to bear arms in our stead’ ”

Senator James Harlan of Iowa hoped that the clause allowing conscientious objectors to do hospital service might be acceptable to Quaker conscientious objectors:

I think the amendment, as modified, meets the case suggested by the Senator from New Jersey. This amendment relieves the party drafted in the case named from military duty entirely, and provides that he may serve in the hospitals, or that in lieu of this hospital service he may pay a sum of money to be applied for the relief of sick and wounded soldiers. The objection made by Friends to paying money has been to paying it as an equivalent for military service. They say, “We might as well bear arms as hire a man to bear arms in our stead.” This amendment, if I understand it, relieves them from the performance of military duty entirely, but it provides that they shall perform duty in the hospitals, and then gives them the alternative of paying money rather than performing this hospital service.

Henry B. Anthony

“These opinions may seem very absurd; I know they do, by Senators smiling around me; but they are opinions that have been entertained for two hundred years by as intelligent men as have ever spoken the English language”

Senator Henry B. Anthony of Rhode Island thought that maybe by hypothecating the militia exemption fine to humanitarian purposes they could evade Quaker scruples:

I would say, in justice to the scruples which the Friends have as to the payment of money, that I do not think they object to a military fine being collected from them by warrant of distress, as, I think, the lawyers call it, or by taxation. They do not pay them voluntarily, but they do not go to prison rather than have their property levied upon. But under the enrollment bill a man must either serve or pay $300 for the procuration of a substitute. They can see a difference, but no great difference in principle, between serving themselves and hiring somebody else to serve for them. The money which they pay is “for the procuration of substitutes.” If the money could be appropriated to any hospital purposes, to any purpose towards which they can conscientiously contribute, they have no objection. These opinions may seem very absurd; I know they do, by Senators smiling around me; but they are opinions that have been entertained for two hundred years by as intelligent men as have ever spoken the English language, and men have borne every persecution that the old martyrs ever bore in defense of these principles — educated, intelligent men; and I think we ought to respect them.

James H. Lane

“The attempt to collect money from the Quakers in lieu of military service will cost the Government ten dollars where they obtain one, if they get it at all”

Kansas Senator James H. Lane agreed with Senator Harlan that drafting Quakers to serve in hospitals was the answer:

I have had some dealings with the Quakers, and I desire to say… that it is perfectly ridiculous to attempt to force a Quaker into the ranks of the Army. It cannot be done, or if you should succeed in doing it, he would be worthless as a soldier. Besides, the attempt to collect money from the Quakers in lieu of military service will cost the Government ten dollars where they obtain one, if they get it at all. It is a losing business to attempt to collect money from Quakers in lieu of military service. But if you adopt the proposition of the Senator from Iowa, giving them the privilege of serving in hospitals, and permitting them to pay their money in lieu of hospital service, they will promptly and cheerfully come forward and pay that money, their conscientious scruples not being violated by such payment.

Lazarus W. Powell

“If a man cannot conscientiously go to war, and cannot conscientiously give money to carry on war, how can he conscientiously pay the taxes that the Government imposes for the purpose of carrying on the war?”

Senator Lazarus W. Powell thought either his colleagues or the Quakers or both must be crazy. Ironically, perhaps, his characterization of the Quaker point-of-view was in many ways the most accurate yet. And his reductio charging that paying taxes to a government that is conducting a war is no different from paying commutation fines to pay for a conscription substitute is, instead, a pithy argument for war tax resistance:

I was in favor of exempting Friends; but I cannot understand the subtle logic of gentlemen who seem to think that if you compel a Friend to pay $300 commutation money in lieu of hospital service he can do it conscientiously when he cannot pay the money in lieu of military service. The hospital service is just as much an attendant upon war as any other service connected with the Army. You frequently have to detail soldiers to attend to your sick and wounded. Assigning them to hospital service and to military service is in effect the same.… How a man can conscientiously pay the taxes that the Government imposes for the purpose of raising men and paying them and buying munitions of war, when he cannot conscientiously pay the commutation money, is a matter that I cannot well comprehend. I cannot see any difference. If a man cannot conscientiously go to war, and cannot conscientiously give money to carry on war, how can he conscientiously pay the taxes that the Government imposes for the purpose of carrying on the war? Why, sir, if a man can conscientiously pay the taxes, he can just as conscientiously pay commutation money. As the law now stands, a man can exempt himself from military duty by paying commutation money. That is but a form of taxation for the purpose of getting soldiers into your Army. The money goes to hire substitutes or to pay bounties. So the money that is raised by taxation is taken out of your Treasury for the purpose of paying bounties to soldiers and paying them their monthly stipend or wages. Where is the difference? There is none.

Senator Anthony thought the best approach might be to take advantage of the fact that Quakers typically would put up with distraints of their property without resistance:

I offer another amendment, to insert the following as new sections:

And be it further enacted, That any person drafted into the military service of the United States, who is conscientiously unable to perform military service, or pay commutation therefor, by reason of his religious scruples against bearing arms, may apply by petition to any judge of any court of the United States for the circuit or district wherein he resides, setting forth the facts; whereupon the said judge shall proceed summarily to hear and determine the case; and if it shall appear that such petition is true, and that such petitioner shall have maintained a consistent character in accordance with his well-known religious professions, incompatible with military service, the judge shall certify the fact to the board to enrollment for the enrollment district in which such petitioner shall reside, and upon the receipt of such certificate the board of enrollment shall take no further proceedings, nor shall any proceeding whatever be taken to enforce such conscientious person into the military service of the United States under that draft, or for the period of three years from the date of such certificate.

And be it further enacted, That at the time of issuing such certificate by a judge of the district or circuit court, as aforesaid, or as soon thereafter as practicable, such judge shall issue an order to the clerk of the district or circuit court of which he is the judge, to issue a warrant of distress directed to the marshal of the district, or to his deputy, against such conscientious person for the sum of $400, with all lawful costs upon the said petition and warrant, and the same shall be served by levying the same upon the goods, chattels, moneys, lands, and tenements of such conscientious person, and when recovered, the said penalty shall be paid into the Treasury of the United States, and the costs to the persons entitled to receive the same.

The effect of this amendment is, that a person conscientiously scrupulous against bearing arms is relieved from the obligation to pay $400 for the procuration of some other person to do that which he believes God has forbidden him to do, and provides that the fine shall be collected by warrant of distress. He then submits to the law, the law takes his property, and he makes no complaint or opposition; but he is not required to do it voluntarily, and that is a great relief to the consciences of a great many intelligent men.…

James R. Doolittle

“I do not understand any Quaker in the world to object to ministering to the wants of those who are sick or who are wounded in war”

Then there was some back-and-forth between Senators James R. Doolittle Henry B. Anthony, and Reverdy Johnson:

Mr. Doolittle. The bill as it stands does not require them to go as combatants at all, but simply gives them their choice, either to take care of the sick and wounded, or pay over their $400 for the purpose of providing for the wants of the sick and wounded. I do not understand any Quaker in the world to object to ministering to the wants of those who are sick or who are wounded in war. They are willing to do everything to alleviate the results of war. What they object to is bearing arms and being instrumental in the killing of men themselves.

Mr. Anthony. A great many of them object to rendering any service which relieves another man from the obligation of that service and enables him to go into the Army.

Mr. Johnson. That is going too far.

Mr. Anthony. It is going too far, I know, but it is no further than very honest and very intelligent men go. They have held these opinions, and their ancestors before them, for a great many years. As it is the same thing to the Government, and will be a material relief to them, I cannot see any objection to the amendment.

Reverdy Johnson

“That is going too far”

Senator Ten Eyck tried to reassert his point:

Mr. President, I think these persons ought either to be exempted altogether or not exempted at all. I have on my table a memorial placed there this morning, which comes from the meeting representing the Ohio Yearly Meeting of Friends, held at Damascus on the 8^th day of the first month, 1864, in which these memorialists state—

That the Society of Friends has from its rise been conscientious against fighting or bearing arms under any circumstances, or paying an equivalent in lieu thereof.

After stating the grounds of their belief, the memorial winds up by saying:

We therefore respectfully ask for exemption from military service, and from all penalties for the non-performance thereof.

Congress finally decided to go with the original plan of allowing conscientious objectors to be drafted into noncombatant roles or to pay a commutation fine.

These excerpts can also be found in the book American Quaker War Tax Resistance.

In 1837, a convention met in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to rewrite the state constitution. The previous constitution had been enacted in 1790, and had contained a section reading:

The freemen of this commonwealth shall be armed and disciplined for its defence. Those who conscientiously scruple to bear arms shall not be compelled to do so, but shall pay an equivalent for personal service.

Whether to retain, omit, or alter this section was a hot point of debate over the course of the convention. This debate is a valuable record of how people of the time who were not Quaker pacifists or war tax resisters tried to come to grips with the arguments for conscientious objection and conscientious objection to military taxation.

I’ve reproduced excerpts from this debate in the following pages:

Dramatis Personæ

Introducing the people engaged in the debate

11 July 1837

Meet Colonel Pluck; also: Thomas Cope makes the case of the Society of Friends

20 October 1837, part one

James Biddle and John Porter take the Quaker side, William Smyth disagrees

20 October 1837, part two

John Cummin attacks the scriptural basis for Quaker pacifism

20 October 1837, part three

Joseph Chandler, Benjamin Martin, and William Darlington defend the Friends, John Fuller disagrees, and Charles Brown tries to bring things down to earth

21 October 1837

John Cummin says William Penn did not found a pacifist state, Ephraim Banks makes a curious Shakespeare allusion, John M’Cahen and Emanuel Reigart stand up for government prerogatives, James Porter puts in his two cents, and Benjamin Martin tries to calm them down

23 October 1837

Benjamin Martin and John M’Cahen continue to disagree about the proposed amendment

24 October 1837, part one

James Dunlop wonders where the Mennonites fit in, and expresses doubts about conscience as an excuse for legal exemptions

24 October 1837, part two

Thomas Bell proposes a compromise, which George Woodward attacks; also: is it a fine or a tax?

24 October 1837, part three

William Darlington and James Biddle stand up for Quaker consciences and cite precedent, John Fuller notes that the proposed compromise makes no sense on conscientious grounds, James Porter says that it does however jibe better with the U.S. Constitution, John Cummin expresses contempt for the Quaker peace testimony, Ebenezer Sturdevant lands a blow or two himself, Thomas Bell modifies his amendment, and Walter Forward defends the right of conscience

24 October 1837, part four

Walter Forward resumes his remarks, Ephraim Banks says conscience has been pushed too far, Emanuel Reigart says Quakers should not enjoy an exclusive state-granted privilege, James Merrill stands up for respecting conscience in the law

25 October 1837

Samuel Purviance says it’s a fine and not a tax, George Woodward unleashes the mighty power of his rhetoric (and who is this guy, anyway?), Walter Forward rises to defend himself, and Andrew Cline denies that there is such thing as a right of conscience

25 January 1838

Thomas Bell says maybe they should just leave it up to the legislature, but John Cummin isn’t buying that for a minute

26 January 1838

James Porter thinks Bell’s proposal is just fine, and Joseph Chandler agrees, but the amendment is rejected

2 February 1838

John Cummin can’t resist trying to get in the last word against the dastardly Quakers (and against his exasperated colleagues)

Just when I thought I’d heard all of the proposed Constitutional justifications for legal conscientious objection to military taxation, No Third Solution suggests that the key is The Third Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The wha? Everyone knows what the first two amendments are about. What’s that third one again?

No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

You’ll have to follow the link above to see how No Third Solution stretches this amendment to cover the federal government demanding tax money to maintain a standing army. Seems quite a stretch to me.

Some war tax resisters resist in this way: They calculate how much federal income tax they owe, then they determine what percentage of income tax revenue the federal government spends on war, and then they hold back that percentage of their income tax while paying the rest.

This is a variety of protest that relies on symbolism and on the emphatic value of civil disobedience. But sometimes these resisters claim that what they are doing is not merely a protest but is a variety of conscientious objection — an attempt to practically withdraw support from immoral government policies, or to evade complicity with those policies.

Looked at in that way, the tactic they’ve chosen seems disconnected from the ends they claim to be pursuing. If they withhold 50% of their income tax, for instance, because they believe that that is the percentage of income tax revenue the federal government spends on the military, the remaining 50% that they do pay isn’t any less likely to be spent on the military or to expose the payer to any less complicity. The separation of the bad money they’ve held back from the good money they’ve sent in is only in their mind. It’d be like using half a can of orange paint to paint one chair, and half of it to paint another chair, and expecting to end up with a red chair and a yellow chair.

The people who practice this variety of war tax resistance aren’t idiots — they know that the government isn’t doling out each individual taxpayer’s tax dollars one-by-one with the Defense Department last in the queue (“sorry, General, but it looks like we’ve run out!”). And they’ll acknowledge this if you ask directly. But from time to time, many seem to forget that they’re engaged in a symbolic protest, and they deploy the rhetoric of conscientious objection to explain their position.

This was a particularly difficult problem with the Quaker war tax resisters I’ve been studying. The most typical Quaker war tax resistance position went something like this: We must refuse to pay any tax that is levied for the purpose of supporting war or the military, but we must cheerfully pay taxes for the support of civil government even when that government uses some of that tax money to fund a budget that includes military and war spending. Or, as “Philalethes” put it: “we ought not to ask Cæsar what he does with his dues or tribute, but pay it freely. But if he tells me it is for no other use but war and destruction, I’ll beg his pardon and say ‘my Master forbids it.’ ”

Philalethes’s argument, and the others quoted here, can be found in the book American Quaker War Tax Resistance.

When resisters would deploy their most daunting rhetoric of conscience and pacifism to defend the first prong of this forked position, their critics would respond by wondering why such passionate reasoning wouldn’t apply equally well to the second. Attempts to answer this objection by asserting the harmlessness or blamelessness of paying a mixed tax would then threaten to undermine the force of the conscientious objection argument, which seemed to rely on a heartfelt refusal to be involved even indirectly in bloodshed. As one critic put it:

Why might they not as well resist the payment of a tax which goes to the support of the army or navy of the United States? If they have any conscientious scruples at all upon the subject, they must be carried out or they are good for nothing. What difference is there, in principle, between killing a fellow man in war and paying another man to kill him? And, again, do not the Friends pay one man to kill another when they pay their share of the general tax towards the support of the government and the means of national defense?

There came to be a hotly disputed science of discerning the difference between war taxes and “mixed” taxes, the former being ones that would trouble a good Quaker conscience to the extent of civil disobedience, but the latter being ordained and blessed by Jesus and the Apostles. The problem was that the nature of the difference between these taxes was difficult to pin down.

If the government raised taxes across the board as it was going to war and raising military spending to match, was this a war tax, or since it was just going into the general budget as before (although a higher percentage of this budget was being spent on war than usual) was it no less objectionable now than it had been before? What if the government, in the course of raising taxes, had explicitly said that the latest tax hike was for the war? Would that matter, and if so, how is it that your conscientious objection might be triggered by something of so little weight as a legislative preamble?

In many cases it was indeed the case that the words uttered while money changed hands were thought to be more important than the actual, practical transaction. Thus, for instance, the Pennsylvania Assembly would not fulfill requests of money for fortifications or other war expenses, but would respond to these requests by granting money “for the King/Queen’s use.” In this way, although the practical, real-world effect was the same, the Quaker consciences were spared. “We did not see it,” one said, “to be inconsistent with our principles to give the Queen money notwithstanding any use she might put it to, that not being our part but hers.”

But what of those militia exemption fines that Quakers so regularly refused to pay? These were fines that conscientious objectors (or, often, anyone with enough money and better ideas of how to spend his time) could pay in lieu of otherwise mandatory military service. Most of the writings about Quaker war tax resistance that I’ve collected are about resistance to these fines. But if the fines went into the general fund just like any other tax, as they sometimes did, on what ground could a Quaker object to the one and not the other?

In fact, the evolution of Quaker resistance to militia exemption taxes underwent an interesting shift over time from conscientious objection to a more confrontational civil disobedience.

At first, Quakers justified their resistance to these taxes by saying that they could neither bear arms nor pay a substitute to bear arms in their place, or that they could not pay a tax that was specifically designated for war purposes as this would mean actively participating in war.

But over time, this justification underwent a shift (one that was subtle enough that I have found no records that try explicitly to justify it). Quakers came to object to militia exemption taxes even when these taxes went into the government’s general fund, or even if they were specifically designated for humanitarian purposes that Quakers would not otherwise object to. They objected to these taxes, not because the taxes would make them participants in war but because, as the Meeting for Sufferings of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting put it in 1865:

Believing that liberty of conscience is the gift of the Creator to man, Friends have ever refused to purchase the free exercise of it by the payment of any pecuniary or other commutation to any human authority.

This is a much more radical position. No longer was resistance to militia exemption taxes just a refusal to participate in the wars and fightings of the powers of the world; instead, it became a notice that those powers had overstepped their bounds when they pretended to regulate and tax conscientious scruples.

People trying to extract war money from Quakers occasionally tried to “hack” this odd protocol by which they could approve of “mixed” taxes in most circumstances. For instance, in 1693 when Benjamin Fletcher tried to get the Pennsylvania Assembly to cough up some money to fight the French & Indians, he wrote:

[I]f there be any amongst you that scruple the giving of money to support war, there are a great many other charges in that government, for the support thereof, as officers salaries and other charges, that amount to a considerable sum: Your money shall be converted to these uses, and shall not be dipped in blood.

You’ll recognize this as the same sort of promise held out by today’s proponents of the Peace Tax Fund Act: Give the government your money and in return the government pledges it will spend your money only on the good stuff and will spend someone else’s money on the stuff you don’t like.

It took some fortitude to look at mixed taxes and to say that the mixture of taxes for war with taxes for civil government didn’t wash the blood off the former but further bloodied the latter. The 1755 “epistle” of John Woolman and others to their fellow Friends introduced this position:

[T]hough some part of the money to be raised by the said Act is said to be for such benevolent purposes as supporting our friendship with our Indian neighbors and relieving the distresses of our fellow subjects… and we could most cheerfully contribute to those purposes if they were not so mixed that we cannot in the manner proposed show our hearty concurrence therewith without at the same time assenting to, or allowing ourselves in, practices which we apprehend contrary to the testimony which the Lord has given us to bear for his name and Truth’s sake.

Job Scott “believed a time would come, when Christians would not so far contribute to the encouragement and support of war and fightings as voluntarily to pay taxes that were mainly, or even in considerable proportion, for defraying the expenses thereof.” And Moses Brown worried that this might mean completely unraveling the distinction that allowed Quakers to think of themselves as both conscientiously objecting to supporting war, but also obeying the Biblical instructions to “render unto Caesar” and “pay ye tribute”:

[S]ome Friends refuse all taxes, even those for civil uses as well as those clear for war and others that are mixed, and thereby dropping our testimony of supporting civil government by readily contributing thereto, it has been a fear whether this variety of conduct won’t mar rather than promote the work. Could we be more united in the ground of our testimony and in our practice in it, I should have more hopes of its speedy obtaining in society. A time will doubtless come when a smaller proportion will be for war than at present when the greater part being for civil uses, friends may pay as there is and ought to be according to the apostle, a conscientiousness in paying to the support of civil government as well as refuse that for war…

Then he anticipates the “Peace Tax Fund” idea, or something like it:

…to refuse the payment of such when even a lesser part be mixed for war before we applied to the authority to separate them would not at present be my place, but probably before that time come when the lesser part will be for war friends may be agreed to ask a separation which, if it should be refused, we might be united in refusing even those the greater part of which may be for civil uses.

Joshua Maule sparred with other Friends about this issue. When the government added a war surtax to the regular tax bill, many Quakers were untroubled by paying it: although it bore the name of a war tax, it was collected in the same way as the general tax they’d been paying all along, and like that tax, it was deposited in the general fund and spent at the whim of the legislature. But Maule felt that by calling it a war surtax, the government had brought it into inevitable conflict with the Quaker conscience, and he lashed out at more accommodating Friends. “[T]hat [tax] for the war and bounty was not mixed with any other,” he wrote, “until those who paid it voluntarily mixed it themselves and thereby made it their own act to pay the price for men to go forth to the field of human slaughter.” The way Maule figured it:

[I]f I owe a just debt, I must pay it; if the person receiving the money uses it for a bad purpose, the accountability is with him; but if he demand money of me avowedly to be used in any way to the plundering of my neighbor, destroying his property, or taking his life, then if I furnish money thus demanded I become an accomplice in the evil work and accountable for the sin. I consider our civil taxes a just debt that should be promptly paid, but I am satisfied that no human authority has either a moral or a religious right to demand of me money or means of any kind to aid in destroying the lives and property of my fellow-men.

But note that Maule only refused to pay the surtax — that portion of his total tax that was “avowedly” being raised for war. Certainly, though, the government was “avowing,” with every budget, that it was going to be spending some portion of both the surtax and the regular tax on the very same things. And so those who disagreed with Maule shot back that he was playing plenty of money “to aid in destroying the lives and property of [his] fellow-men” and he knew it, so won’t he please give it a rest. Nathan Hall put it well when he wrote to Maule:

[W]hether we pay less or more of that tax, a certain proportion of it goes for military or war purposes; and it avails nothing to say: “We did not pay it for that purpose, and if wicked and bad men so apply it, it is their lookout, not ours.” We can say that of all the tax as well as a part.

If the law had said so many dollars to be raised for war purposes, instead of such a portion of each and every dollar, it would have been plain and not a mixed tax. Such is not the case; it is all collected together and thrown into one general treasury, where it remains till it is apportioned out for the different purposes designated by the law. There might be as many different classes of objectors or withholders of tax as there are purposes for which it is appropriated, and the officers of government know nothing of the nature or cause of any of them; they would only know there was a deficiency, and apply that on hand in due proportions for their different purposes, and the deficiency, when collected, in like manner. To illustrate it more fully I will suppose a case which I believe is strictly parallel, thus: We both have a testimony against the use of ardent spirits, but are, being very thirsty, placed in a situation where we can get no water except some that has a small portion of whiskey in it. Being under the necessity of taking something, you may, by inquiry and calculation, find what proportion of the objectionable article is contained in it, and leave just that much in your bowl; while my understanding will be that in partaking I partake of both good and bad, and in refusing refuse both. So that with me the question is and has been, not what portion I should pay so much as whether any at all.

When I was speaking at the Abundance League a while back about my tax resistance, one horrified liberal — alarmed at the enthusiasm those around her were showing for the stand I’d taken — launched into a defense of government spending on things like roads and general infrastructure. I thought what a shame it was that such valuable things as these had to be bought at such high prices from their monopoly supplier so as to support their “one Iraq war free with purchase” promotion deal.

A new edition of NWTRCC’s newsletter, More Than a Paycheck, is out. The contents include:

• “Bringing Light into Darkness” — Marcus Page and Mike Butler discuss their civil disobedience action at Los Alamos National Laboratory in support of the 2008 War Tax Boycott
• Some brief notes on the “economic stimulus” checks, frivolous filing warnings from the IRS that some war tax resisters have been receiving, the IRS’s expanded snitch payment program, limits on the IRS’s ability to seize pensions before they come due, and increasing IRS interest in offshore bank accounts
• Some news about the status of the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act and about Joshua Goldberg’s war tax resistance in Canada
• Notes from resisters, including Greg Reagle responding to critics who say that war tax resistance isn’t effective, Melissa Jameson relating stories about how her resistance relates to those around her, and a summary of the story of resister Charles Merrill
• A plug for my book We Won’t Pay!: A Tax Resistance Reader
• Some committee business including an announcement of the upcoming national meeting in Eugene, Oregon in November and an invitation to readers to help shape the future direction of the 2008 War Tax Boycott project
• Jay Sordean’s review of Smedley Butler’s 1935 book War Is a Racket
• A profile by and of A. Jesse Jiryu Davis, who takes a zen approach to ethical living and tax resistance

Ruth Benn, NWTRCC’s coordinator, attended the 12^th International Conference on War Tax Resistance & Peace Tax Campaigns in Manchester, England earlier this month.

Yesterday she wrote up a preliminary report on the goings-on. Some excerpts:

There were about 60 people from 14 countries — about standard for these conferences. Sadly I have to report that our efforts to get George Rishmawi from Palestine to the conference ended in a refused visa, so that he could not travel to the conference. The British organizers tried really hard to get thru the red tape but to no avail. Two people from Ghana were refused visas also.…

…As with most conferences (at least in my humble opinion) the time spent talking with folks at meals and between the organized sessions is at least as important as anything that comes up in the sessions. Quite a few of my conversations were with individuals from other countries who are war tax resisters, who refuse to pay at least some of taxes due to their respective governments. Many combine their refusal with redirecting the money to some kind of fund for nonviolent defense or peace-building funds.

As we have found in the past, it is more difficult to resist in most countries because of the way taxes are pulled from paychecks. Those who resist tend to be self-employed. In general, collection is much faster in other countries than has been our experience in the U.S. (at least up to now), and many organizers at this conference make no effort to build WTR, seeing it as futile. The majority of people at the conference are working on peace tax fund campaigns or looking for ways to take their complaint of being forced to pay for war through some court system or U.N. body. I think 5 of the Peace Tax Seven were in attendance, and they are slowly making their way into the European Court of Human Rights. Daniel Jenkins from the U.S. reported on the effort to bring a formal complaint to a U.N. body. The Germans have a resister or two in their circles, but are focusing on a new effort of 10 people to take a complaint to a German high court based on the 2009 budget being a violation of fundamental rights because of the military spending. The Germans are trying to get away from appealing through the tax system and instead trying this more direct route to the government officials who create the budget. In Norway peace tax fund campaigners are appealing to their local councils; if the council accepts their complaint as an “initiative of national interest” then the council can send a complaint up to the next level of the government system.

I attended two workshops that related more generally to organizing, with both having some focus on how to widen our efforts. Groups and campaigns in every country seem to face issues similar to our own. “How to bring in more young people” was the topic of one workshop. While no group seemed to be doing any better than many of us here in the U.S., many are looking for answers in the internet, such as getting into Facebook and other networking sites, and upgrading our websites. The Danish peace tax fund campaign has been working with the model U.N. program in high schools with some success at making “the right not to pay for war” a topic in those discussions. One person noted that the activists groups that seem to be most successful at drawing in young people are the ones that give new members something to do immediately and regularly. There was also a good deal of discussion of language, in particular the use of the word “conscience,” and whether that is a word that resonates with young folks today. Because the hosting group was Britain’s “Conscience: the peace tax campaign,” it was the local folks who were having this discussion among themselves and also bringing it to the conference. “Taxes for Peace Not War” was a slogan that many people appreciated due to the positive spin.…

…There were small group sessions to talk about the common ground between war tax resisters and peace tax campaigns and develop ideas about how we can all work together more across international boundaries. I don’t know if any of the groups came up with any brilliant insights on this. My group did spend quite a bit of time comparing our tax systems and learning more precisely what each of our organizations do. It’s hard to figure out how to work together without understanding more about each situation; there’s a lot of confusion about why there is such a “strong” war tax resistance movement in the U.S. as compared to other countries. One person said rather emphatically — “I just don’t understand why anyone would be a war tax resister without also working for a peace tax fund.” Others perceived that peace tax fund campaigns and WTR need each other, that you can’t have one without the other; I said that I could certainly resist without any connection to a peace tax fund campaign, but I began to see that many Europeans see the effort to actually redirect military taxes to a fund that is only for peace-building efforts or alternative defense is primary to their peace tax fund campaigns. I think the U.S. efforts have never had this peace-building fund as an emphasis; the peace tax fund bill as it has been written in the U.S. redirects the taxes of conscientious objectors to the non-military spending in the U.S. budget, not to a specific peace-building effort. I found that insight rather interesting as I never understood so clearly how many of the campaigns are writing their bills for this specific purpose.

In my small group and in general there was clearly interest in making Conscience and Peace Tax International more of an umbrella group for all of our work. Due to technicalities of nonprofit status, NWTRCC has not been an official member of CPTI but has been a supporter. CPTI was founded as more of a link for the peace tax fund campaigns than for WTRs, but we’ll see how things develop. Many wanted to see more organizing successes and ideas posted on the CPTI website. Right now it has links to the groups in each country and information on WTR court cases and conscientious objection rulings within the U.N.…

…If you’ve read this far, you get the bonus link to some of Ed Hedemann’s photos from the conference. They are posted at: http://www.nwtrcc.org/ManchesterConference_2008.html.

Ruth Benn has expanded on her impressions of the 12^th International Conference on War Tax Resistance and Peace Tax Campaigns over at the NWTRCC website.

Included with that article is another by Ed Hedemann in which he compares war tax resistance in the U.S. with that in other countries, particularly those in Europe. Excerpts:

U.S. peace activists who want to refuse to pay for war have it easy, at least compared to most of the rest of the world. In the United States, everyone who wants to resist taxes can do so.

We must file — or refuse to file — income tax returns, which makes refusal possible, whereas in most countries that option doesn’t exist. For example, in Britain, unless you’re self-employed, there is no income tax return to file. Income taxes are taken directly from your paycheck (through Pay As You Earn — PAYE) and employees cannot control the amount that is withheld unless their employer is willing to be complicit…

…The consequences for those who are able to resist (mostly the self-employed) are also a bit different. Generally, a court order is required in Britain to seize personal property, which is done more frequently than in the United States. In other countries (such as Germany), if there is a judgment against a resister, tax agents can come to your house and put stickers on personal property (TV set, computer, bicycle, etc.) to indicate that these items will be seized in 30 days unless the government gets paid. Also, it appears that the percentage of resisters being sent to jail — though small in number (only four in the last 20 years) — is higher in Britain than in the United States. The sentences have ranged from a week to four weeks.

As a result of these restrictions, the numbers of war tax resisters in other countries are much smaller than the several thousand in the United States. For example, in Belgium, only one person is known to be a war tax resister.

Benn and Hedemann both note the differences between the peace tax fund proposals in Europe from the one in the United States. In the U.S., the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act would wall off federal military spending from other federal spending and would mandate that tax contributions from conscientious objectors could only be applied to the non-military budget items. The proposals of European peace tax fund plan advocates, by contrast, “are geared towards having their taxes put into new programs established to develop systems of nonviolent defense as an alternative to the military.”

I’m fresh back from the NWTRCC Fall national conference, which was held this year in Eugene, Oregon, and hosted by the enthusiastic and welcoming Eugene “Taxes for Peace Not War” group.

I’ve got a binder full of handouts and hastily-scratched notes that I took whenever I found a spare moment. Today I’ll share some of my impressions of the gathering and of the current state of the war tax resistance movement.

Frivolity

• Many of the attendees were concerned about the IRS being more aggressive in sending out notices of “frivolous filing” penalties to resisters who send letters of protest that explain their refusal to pay along with their tax returns.
  • One couple who were first-time resisters and had only refused to pay a token $50 last year were assessed “frivolous filing” penalties of $5,000 — each, even though they had filed a single return jointly — though they had filled out their return accurately and completely. The IRS also insists that once they have assessed a “frivolous filing” penalty, you must pay that penalty before you can appeal it!
  • The law seems pretty clear that the “frivolous filing” penalty is only meant to apply if the tax return is incomplete or incorrect, but the IRS seems to be applying it haphazardly — not only to people who file complete and accurate returns but who refuse to pay some portion, but even to people who file and pay every cent but who merely inclose a letter registering their protest or disapproval!
  • Meanwhile, other resisters — including one who files a return every year with her social security number at the top but with none of the other required information, and with the 1040 form over-written with a protest message in red ink — have never been assessed a “frivolous filing” penalty or even received a “frivolous filing” warning letter.

The coordinating committee discusses the RFPTFA on Sunday morning

The “Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act”

• One item on the agenda was a request by the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund that NWTRCC formally “recommit to the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Bill and the efforts NCPTF is doing to get it passed in Congress.” As I explained last month, I have serious misgivings about “peace tax fund” proposals in general, and think that the current incarnation of the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act in particular would do more harm than good. However, NWTRCC had endorsed a different version of this legislation years ago, and so many people expected this new call for an endorsement to be a no-brainer. Much debate ensued.
  • Robert Randall pointed out that NWTRCC’s “Statement of Purpose” includes “support of the US Peace Tax Fund Bill.” He interpreted this as being a built-in endorsement of the latest act which would make the current debate moot. However, no act by that name has been introduced recently — I think since 1995 — and in many important ways the current legislation does not resemble the version that NWTRCC endorsed back in the day.
  • I was a little worried that I would be the only one objecting to the endorsement and that this would put me outside of the general consensus of the group, but as it turns out there were many people present who expressed misgivings about peace tax fund legislation and who weren’t enthusiastic about endorsing it, and I heard more than one person express that this was a long-overdue debate.
  • Many of the Act’s supporters seem to have ideas of what the Act would accomplish that go way beyond the actual text of the legislation. One said, for instance, that if the Act passed, it would effectively allow citizens to annually vote yea or nay on war or on whatever wars the government was engaged in at the time.
  • Some participants in the discussion were concerned that NWTRCC remain on good terms with NCPTF, in part so that we may be more influential as they recraft their strategy in the coming years.
  • One person said that because the Act is a long-shot to ever become law, it is best judged not by what its effects would be if it were enacted, but by what it symbolizes as a proposal that approximates the hopes of people who want legal recognition for conscientious objection to military taxation. (Myself, I’m not sure I buy this argument, but in any case I think that the symbolism of the Act is ambiguous at best and may very well communicate a message that is, on the whole, harmful to the cause.)
  • The result of our discussion was that we decided to hold off on making a decision of whether or not to endorse until our May meeting, at which time we will have more time to discuss the question and more time to study the points that are in debate.
• A book of writings by and about Marian Franz and her work with the peace tax fund campaign is forthcoming, and will include a piece by Ruth Benn about the war tax resistance movement and its relationship with the peace tax fund campaign.

Election aftermath

• There was varied reaction to the recent presidential election. Many people were skeptical of the promise for meaningful change, and distrustful towards the Democratic party, and saw the election mostly in terms of whether it would anaesthetize progressive activists or whether it might be possible to reactivate the hopeful coalitions that helped to propel Obama into office once Hope turns to disappointment.
  • Others were very enthusiastic about the change and hoped that progressives and peace activists might finally be able to influence government policy. One person went as far as to say that we’d “won” and would have to get used to being winners on the inside of the power structure instead of ignored pleaders outside of it. Another hopefully imagined getting a group of progressive religious leaders to sit down with Obama and confront his faith with a challenge to go further than his public statements have so far suggested. To me this all sounds like stuff of the same sort as gingerbread houses, flying carpets, and fairy godmothers, but I mention it here to show that some of the Hope bubble has infected even a skeptical group like NWTRCC.
• There was much mention of “Camp Hope” — a vigil that will be held near Obama’s home in Chicago in January up to inauguration day. The goals of this vigil will be to encourage Obama to follow-through boldly on some of his more progressive campaign themes. The demands of the vigil are meant to harmonize with, rather than to protest, the goals of the Obama campaigners, and will concentrate on actions that the new administration can take immediately via executive orders.
  • This is said to be partially based on a similar vigil that took place in the run-up to Jimmy Carter’s inauguration in 1977 that asked Carter to pardon Vietnam-era draft resisters and to cancel the B-1 bomber program, both of which Carter did.
• A new war funding supplemental bill is expected to hit Congress in January, and this will be an early test of what kind of Change we can expect from the new order, and what kind of power the current anti-war movement is capable of asserting.

The War Tax Boycott

• Last year’s war tax boycott campaign was well-received by some local war tax resistance groups, who found it a good focal point for their outreach efforts. However, the number of people who participated in the boycott disappointed the hopes of those who initiated the campaign. There was much discussion of whether we should continue the campaign into the coming year and if so in what fashion.
• If we were to continue the campaign into 2009 — making the April, 2009 tax day the climax of the campaign — this would give us little time to mount a serious outreach effort, and at the same time it would have to compete for attention with the actions of the opening months of the new Obama administration. It might be hard to convince new resisters to join up if they’re still placing their hopes for peace with their rulers.
• We eventually concluded that we would continue the campaign, but would concentrate this year on retrenching and consolidation rather than on a major outreach and publicity campaign, in preparation for a larger campaign when the inevitable Obama Disappointment sets in. Meanwhile, local groups that find the campaign useful can continue to use it as before.
• Rather than making April 15^th the target date for beginning to resist, we may be better off doing what Code Pink did with its war tax resistance campaign and tell people that their resistance begins the moment they take their first affirmative step toward tax resistance, for instance by adjusting their W-4 withholding.
• One person said that although she resisted taxes last year, she didn’t sign up for the boycott because she was only resisting a small amount and was redirecting that amount to local groups, and she had the impression that the boycott was mainly for people redirecting larger amounts to the two showcase charities highlighted by the boycott campaign.
• Some people who did boycott outreach found that some folks were reluctant to sign on to the boycott for fear of the danger of being on some government list, and stressed that there should be a way for people to join the campaign anonymously.

Miscellany

• Some local University of Oregon students dropped by the meeting and volunteered to create a redesigned mock-up of the nwtrcc.org web site that we could use if we’d like — a much-appreciated and spontaneous act of generosity.
• NWTRCC will be trying to nurture a new regional gathering of war tax resisters — something along the lines of the New England Regional Gathering of War Tax Resisters and Supporters that is coming up later this month. To this end, it will be inviting groups that are interested in hosting such a gathering to submit proposals, and will select one of these proposals to support with some seed money and other assistance.
• NWTRCC decided to commit to revitalize the War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund, which seems to have run out of steam (appeals for funds go out very infrequently, and resisters are reimbursed only after long delay).
• NWTRCC coordinator Ruth Benn is preparing a series of “Readings on Money.” These include transcripts of some of the discussion on that subject at the 2006 Fall gathering in Las Vegas, Karen Marysdaughter’s essay on “The Influence of Money on Decisions to Engage in War Tax Resistance,” George Salzman’s “Inheritance and Social Responsibility,” a debate about the ethics of accepting interest on loans and bank deposits from Juanita Nelson and Bob Irwin, and a look at the intwined structure of government spending, national debt, the war machine, the federal reserve, and the income tax from Jay Sordean.

Kathy Kelly leads a workshop on “Honesty and Empathy: Questions for Collaborators”

• Kathy Kelly led us through some role-playing exercises concerning collaboration and how to confront it, and shared some stories with us from her experiences with activism and humanitarian assistance. Her public presentation at the University after the end of the Saturday NWTRCC conference session was well-appreciated by those who attended. Kelly is an engaging speaker who relates interesting experiences vividly and well — with a great command of accents and the ability to invoke strong and varied emotions without making the audience feel like they’ve been strapped on a roller-coaster. One of her themes: around the world, many people are forced to make great sacrifices because of the decisions our political leaders are making. Meanwhile, what will raise us to make the sacrifices we need to make to make things right? To those of us to whom much has been given, much will be expected in this regard. We need to slow down and unflinchingly reassess our priorities. “This is what grown-ups do.”
• Mike Butler volunteered to bring NWTRCC into the MySpace / Facebook universe, so keep an eye out there.

Erica Weiland removes a pillar of militarism in Susan Quinlan’s workshop

• Susan Quinlan demonstrated some of the techniques she uses in youth outreach to teach about the unbalanced government budget priorities and about how to build a better society by shifting your support from the pillars that support a system of injustice to the pillars that support the scaffolding of a better system.
• I remember a couple of interesting stories of how people were introduced to war tax resistance. One couple was working with Christian Peacemaker Teams in Colombia and met some war tax resisters there and then took up war tax resistance on their return home. Another new resister had been working for an alternative newspaper that received a grant from a war tax resisters’ tax-redirection alternative fund, and learned about war tax resistance that way.
• I sold several books — some of each of We Won’t Pay!: A Tax Resistance Reader, American Quaker War Tax Resistance, The Price of Freedom: Political philosophy from Thoreau’s Journals, and My Thoughts Are Murder to the State: Thoreau’s Essays on Political Philosophy, with We Won’t Pay being the top seller in spite of being the pricier volume of the lot — more people buying copies of that one than all the others combined.

Conference attendees review part of Steev Hise’s rough cut for Death and Taxes

• Steev Hise’s war tax resistance video project continues, with a projected completion date around the end of this year. Conference attendees saw a preview of a portion of the film and seemed enthusiastic about it.
• The next national meeting will be held this coming Spring (early May) somewhere in the vicinity of Washington, D.C. — details to be hashed out in the coming months. The next Fall national will be in Cleveland, Ohio around this time next year.

And with all that, I’m still leaving a lot out. But for now, that’ll have to do.

There’s a new issue out of NWTRCC’s newsletter, More Than a Paycheck. This one includes:

• DeCourecy Squires’s story of becoming a war tax resister and continuing to resist for four decades (so far)
• Some notes on Hiroshima Day outreach, tax policy and news updates, and war tax resistance ideas & actions
• A review of A Persistent Voice: Marian Franz and Conscientious Objection to Military Taxation
• A look at some new and updated resources available from NWTRCC
• News about the upcoming NWTRCC national in Ohio this November, the 2010 international conference next year in Norway, the upcoming New England gathering of war tax resisters in Vermont in October, and other upcoming gatherings
• And the encouraging news that the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting has decided to refuse to comply with an IRS levy on the salary on one of the Meeting’s employees, war tax resister Priscilla Adams

The health care industry legislation that became law today (of which I addressed some of the implications for tax resisters yesterday) includes provisions to accommodate the conscientious objection of people opposed to abortion and of Amish groups who have traditionally taught that the purchase of insurance betrays a mistrust of divine providence.

Amish in good standing will be exempt from the law’s requirement that all Americans have health insurance, which is to say that they will not be subject to the federal excise tax on uninsured individuals. Health insurance plans will not be required to cover abortions — indeed, states may prohibit abortion-providing plans in their “exchanges” — and those that do cover abortion will have to do so via a separately-funded option that cannot be paid for via the various government subsidies in the law. President Obama recently emphasized these abortion restrictions by issuing an executive order that reconfirmed the ban on using taxpayer money to pay for abortions.

But neither the orthodox Amish nor the anti-abortion activists seem pleased with these concessions.

Gary Kauffman of The Goshen News interviewed David Yoder, who monitors national law for the Old Order Amish. He points out that while there is an exception written into the law that shields individual Amish people from having to be covered by health insurance, there is no such shield for Amish employers, even Amish employers of Amish employees, who will be required to provide health insurance for those they hire. “It’s a huge concern for all Amish,” Yoder said. “It’s definitely not something we could comply with.” Yoder also worries that as government-mandated corporate health plans insinuate into the Amish community, the cooperative neighbors-helping-neighbors form of mutual aid that takes the place of health insurance among the Amish will degrade, and, along with it, the quality of health: “Even if there is an exemption for us, health care quality will still go down. Maybe not immediately, but in five or ten years.”

Meanwhile, many anti-abortion activists aren’t at all convinced that the many safeguards in the law will actually prevent taxpayer money from subsidizing abortions, or enable people who don’t want to fund abortions to find both legally-compliant and conscientiously-acceptable health insurance:

Richard Doerflinger, associate director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities, said the idea of tax resistance has been mentioned in response to concerns about unjust wars.

“This bill says most of the plans getting federal subsidies make every enrollee pay a separate payment solely for people’s abortions,” he said. “Some people have said what an opportunity for a movement of resistance for people of faith who have these plans or are saddled with one; to refuse to pay that particular fee. If that is the only option we have, that is an interesting idea for Catholics and Protestants to focus on.”

It is a remarkable contrast to this how much the concerns of conscientious objectors to military taxation are ignored by lawmakers. People who don’t want to pay the salaries of torturers, or who have conscientious qualms about building weapons of indiscriminate slaughter, can be and are ignored. Convocations of Catholic bishops don’t hold press conferences on their behalf, legislators don’t hold their votes back on a pretense of standing up for them.

The official word from the courts is that it would be too onerous for the government to carve out an exception for such conscientious objectors, though this recent bill and others show that Congress is perfectly capable of carving a little here and a little there when that’s what it takes to get the job done.

But, as with this recent bill, even were Congress to make some sort of concessions to conscientious objectors to military taxation, these would be unlikely to go far enough to be satisfying to any but those who were eagerly looking for an excuse to put their consciences down and get on with other business.

Some links that have caught my eye:

• Derek Brett of Conscience and Peace Tax International explains how their campaign grew out of the international movement to recognize conscientious objection to military conscription, and how he sees the movement’s goals.
• Bruce Bartlett looks at the experimental evidence for the “starve the beast” theory, and thinks it disproven. In recent decades, revenue and tax cuts have coincided with the growth of government. Since tax reductions make government seem cheaper, people demand more of it, at least so goes the counter-theory. But I can’t help thinking that the experiment isn’t over yet, and as more of the federal budget goes to paying pensions and interest, the government may yet have to shrink.
• The IRS Oversight Board’s annual report is out. Not much new there, though.

Here’s a piece from the New York Times a little less than a year after the 9/11 attack that mostly concerns the efforts of the promoters of “Peace Tax Fund” legislation in the United States but also touches on American war tax resisters:

War Resisters: ‘We Won’t Go’ to ‘We Won’t Pay’

You could hardly find a more problematic time for pacifists who do not want their taxes spent on the military. But the recent wave of patriotic fervor has only reinvigorated the efforts of one tiny, determined group.

“On the Friday after Sept. 11, I was told I should lay low for a while,” said Marian Franz, executive director of the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund. “Now I have been told this is the time. As the war grows, so does the antiwar movement.”

For more than three decades, the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund has petitioned the federal government for a way to earmark the tax revenues that would go to the military — usually around 50 percent — for nonmilitary purposes, like education or health care. Like conscientious objectors who in the past were offered an alternative to military service, these resisters say the First Amendment protects their ethical or religious objections to paying for war with their taxes.

Like other groups that have struggled to reconcile the obligations of citizenship with antiwar beliefs, the campaign has had a marked increase in inquiries from the public over the last year. At the Center on Conscience and War, a Washington-based national nonprofit group that works for the rights of conscientious objectors, phone calls quadrupled right after Sept. 11 and are now about 4,000 a month, double the usual number, said J. E. McNeil, the center’s executive director.

Mary Loehr, the coordinator of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, an organization based in Ithaca, N.Y., that links 50 groups opposing war or weapons, has also seen a surge in interest. “Starting Sept. 11 through this past May, we have had a call a day from people asking for information, and our busy season is usually January through April,” she said. “I would get 70-year-old women from the Midwest saying: ‘I don’t want to pay for this. Will it hurt my Social Security?’ ”

The debate over whether it is justifiable to withhold tax money from the military was waged on religious, philosophical and legal grounds even before supporters managed to have a bill on the matter introduced in Congress.

Derrick Bell, a visiting professor at the New York University Law School and an expert on constitutional issues, says the law doesn’t allow people to pick and choose where their tax money goes, as if they were at a buffet. “When particular groups try to exempt themselves from having their tax money support a particular government activity, there is no legal precedent for that,” he said.

Professor Bell said the prevailing standard was that the “free exercise” of religion clause in the First Amendment was violated only if a law was shown to be irrational or unreasonable, or that someone suffered some special harm from it.

He noted, too, that even the right to be a conscientious objector to military service was established by statute and theoretically could be overturned by Congress. “There is nothing written in stone,” Professor Bell said. “Even the ‘free exercise’ clause has been variously interpreted.”

Opponents of the tax initiative commonly cite the fear that exempting some taxpayers for their religious beliefs would open a floodgate of claims from others objecting to federal support for everything from the arts to AIDS research. Last year, for instance, a bill was introduced in the Illinois Legislature that would allow taxpayers who are against the death penalty to have the portion of their taxes that finances executions go to schools. The bill, which never had any significant support, was killed.

But advocates counter that pacifism, often grounded in religious belief, is in a category by itself.

“Whenever you come up with a new issue, you hear ‘slippery slope,’ ‘Pandora’s box,’ ” said Ms. McNeil of the Center on Conscience and War, who is also a lawyer. “There is no floodgate. A minuscule amount of taxpayer money goes to pay for abortion or the death penalty, and other issues are political, not religious.”

In the United States, there has been a long religious and ethical tradition of opposition to war. During the 19^th century, Henry David Thoreau refused to pay taxes because he opposed slavery and the military. The Mennonites, the Quakers and the members of the Church of the Brethren, who belong to what are known as historic peace churches because of their pacifist tradition, all refused to take part in the American Revolution. They laid the foundation for the creation in 1940 of the Selective Service Alternative Service Program for conscientious objectors, which started with World War Ⅱ.

Until then, there was no legal recognition for conscientious objection. During World War Ⅰ, 17 soldiers who were conscientious objectors even received death sentences in a military court, although none were carried out.

In 1965 the United States Supreme Court ruled that the criteria for conscientious objection could be broadened to include men who were not members of any religious denomination and in 1970 to include those who did not profess belief in a Supreme Being but had ethical or moral convictions against war.

Ms. Loehr, 44, who has been a war tax resister for 22 years, estimates that about 5,000 people around the country currently withhold taxes because of their objections to war and military spending.

Some tax resisters purposely keep their earnings too low to be taxed, she said, while some are self-employed and refuse to pay estimated tax; and some claim an abundance of tax exemptions so their employers cannot take the money from their paychecks.

The Rev. Michael J. Baxter, national secretary for the Catholic Peace Fellowship in South Bend, Ind., and a professor of theology at Notre Dame University, predicts resistance will rise. “I think as the U.S. gets ready to go to war in Iraq, there will be more tax resisters,” he said. “Sometimes during war, the place that good Christians belong is in jail.”

His group has already begun advising conscientious objectors in case the draft is revived, he said.

In June, to put a human face on their ideals, the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund put together a 15-page booklet featuring the smiling images and often sad tales of tax resisters across the country.

Some of the resisters profiled donate the taxes that they estimate would go to the military to other causes. Others have been imprisoned or lost their assets because of tax evasion. They say they have reached their convictions about the immorality of war through their religious beliefs or the influence of thinkers like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

As pacifists and pastors in the Church of the Brethren, Phil and Louise Baldwin Rieman argue that contributing funds to war is the same as killing. For 30 years they have given about 60 percent of their taxes to civil rights and peace programs, despite Internal Revenue Service threats of liens against their bank accounts, wage-garnishment letters sent to churches where they worked and government seizure of their family van.

“We will look back on war someday like we did on slavery,” said Mr. Rieman, who lives in Indianapolis. A conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, he completed two years of alternative service.

“It feels lonely sometimes, but mostly it feels frustrating,” said Mrs. Rieman, 56, describing the couple’s long odyssey. “We can’t buy a house, we can’t buy a car. We don’t enjoy the feeling of religious freedom they say we enjoy in this country.”

Stanley M. Hauerwas, a professor of theological ethics at Duke Divinity School, said many religious traditions had a history of resistance to laws they considered immoral, those statutes supporting slavery being prime examples.

Even the way that the standards for conscientious objection have changed, from requiring membership in a pacifist church to simply allowing the adherence to certain ethics, shows a government grappling with what constitutes religion, Professor Hauerwas said. Is it ethics, beliefs, membership?

The Peace Tax Fund bill would amend the Internal Revenue Code, setting up a nonmilitary fund to which pacifists could contribute the tax money that would otherwise go to the military. Introduced in 1972 by Representative Ron Dellums, Democrat of California, it has been reintroduced every year since and had 35 supporters in the House of Representatives during Congress’s last session.

“Sept. 11 changed the equation once again,” said Representative Eliot L. Engel, Democrat of New York, a two-time co-sponsor of the bill who no longer supports it. “A case could be made that if every American decided they didn’t like certain policies and decided to withhold taxes, it would be a problem. It wreaks havoc with government.”

But Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia, the bill’s current sponsor and a veteran of the civil rights movement, said Sept. 11 should not make a difference in supporting the rights of conscientious objectors. Other groups may have their own objections to the way federal taxes are spent, he said, but his philosophy was “you try to take the ones that have the largest meaning to the largest number of individuals.”

“We will put on a whole new effort when we come back to Congress,” said Mr. Lewis, an ordained Baptist minister. “Look at the military budget. We have enough bombs, we have enough missiles, we have enough guns.”

From yesterday’s papers in Spain (translation mine, so the usual caveats apply):

Appeal before the Superior Court ruling to redirect some income tax to non-military social ends

Valencia, 1 Dec. (EFE). — A man has today brought an appeal in the Superior Court of Justice of the Valencian Community against the conviction that sentenced him to pay 219 euros to the Treasury that he withheld from his income tax return for 2005 and redirected to social ends in protest against military spending.

As he explained to EFE, Jorge Güemes, who declares himself a “war tax resister,” in 2005 withheld “some” of the money that he had to pay to the tax agency and redirected it to “more just ends” than military ones.

“I took out the percentage destined for military spending in the Ministry of Defence, dedicated, among other things, to research and development of weapons, and this money of my taxes will go to the group Per L’Horta,” he said, and added that he sent to the Treasury a receipt of his payment to the group.

For Güemes, organizations such as the beneficiary of his gesture can “work better” with that money than, in his opinion, can the Spanish Army.

“The Treasury demanded the money from me and then began a legal back-and-forth of claims and administrative counter-claims up to the present day,” he said, and indicated that this — before the Superior Court of Justice — is the last administrative recourse.

“It seems to me fair and useful what I did. I saw the injustice that my money was destined to prepare for war and to buy armaments. I think that one must spend on other things,” he said, and stressed that he means to assert with this attitude a fundamental right.

“I’m not looking for people to be able to pay their taxes a la carte because some taxes seem just to me. But I plead because the big money is not spent that is tied up in military spending,” he affirmed.

The action is branded in the campaign called “war tax resistance” that for thirty years has led Spanish pacifist and antimilitarist groups such as the Antimilitarist Alternative / Movement of Conscientious Objection (MOC), which pertains to the youth.

The appeal presented today against the last decision of the Regional Administrative Economic Tribunal (TEAR), which confirmed the ruling of the Treasury, maintains that the action of Güemes is an expression of fundamental rights such as the freedom of belief, “that — as defined — covers not only any manner of belief but also the action consistent with it.”

And so, he argues that conscientious objection to the maintenance of armies is an expression of freedom of belief and, therefore, its exercise “would not merely be limited to the now-defunct field of obligatory military service,” and the Constitution and international law consecrate this right.

Civil disobedience that supposes pacifist tax resistance is defended in this appeal as that which “would guarantee the collective political right to live in a peaceful world, against which the support of armies, military spending, and the policies of preparation for war would be an obstacle.”

The new issue of More Than a Paycheck, the newsletter of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, is on-line. Among the contents:

• Tips on organizing, recruiting, coalition-building, and media outreach
• An update on the Conscience and Military Tax Campaign. This is an alternative fund to which war tax resisters can redirect their taxes. It has a national focus and so is an alternative to the various regional alternative funds.
• Notes about tax law changes, levy procedures, and social security levies
• An update on the status of the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund bill
• Notes about upcoming actions and gatherings, about how to write imprisoned resisters, and about on-line resources
• News from the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting about their policy towards employees who are war tax resisters (with a link to a PDF of that policy statement)
• A note about the organizational tax resistance of War Resisters International in London

The documentary film Contempt of Conscience is now on-line. This movie focuses on the war tax resisters in Britain known as the “Peace Tax Seven,” putting their protest in the historical context of the fight for conscientious objection to military service, the growth of mechanized warfare, and the history of conscientious war tax resistance.

The seven resisters featured in this film are Joe Jenkins, Robin Brookes, Brenda Boughton, Birgit Völlm, Simon Heywood, Siân Cwper, and Roy Prockter, and there are shout-outs as well to some other resisters, like Henry David Thoreau and Arthur Windsor.

The tax resistance movement featured in this film is largely focused on winning a legal right to conscientious objection to military taxation — largely by judicial appeal based on human rights standards in Britain and Europe — that is, on gaining a legal mechanism that would allow conscientious objectors to pay their taxes to some sort of government account that is firewalled from military expenditures.

On this date in 1987 the Catholic Herald published an article about war tax resistance and the campaign to legalize conscientious objection to military taxation in the U.K.

Military conscription in tax terms

This week’s parliamentary moves on the peace tax campaign are just one aspect of the battle to allow people to choose how their fiscal dues are spent according to conscience. Peter Stanford reports.

Every adult in this country is paying, on average, over £8 a week towards the military budget. Many — perhaps the majority — would consider this an acceptable financial burden to defend these islands. However, a small but growing group hold that their taxes should not be used for a purpose they consider immoral, and are prepared to go to prison for their beliefs.

The similarities between the Peace Tax Campaign and the conscientious objectors of 60 years ago are obvious. PTC describe the 13.6 per cent of our tax burden which goes on defence as “military conscription in financial terms.” They argue that since the right to refuse to fight was recognised in law as long ago as 1916, a similar conscience clause should now apply to taxation.

To that end the PTC was founded in 1977, and it reached another landmark in its campaign to make the majority recognise the rights and beliefs of the minority this week with the tabling of an Early Day Motion in the House of Commons calling on the Government to establish a peace building fund with money diverted by tax objectors.

Alice Mahon, newly-elected Labour MP for Halifax, is behind this latest move. Other motions have been placed before parliament in recent years (by Catholic MP Dennis Canavan amongst others), using time-honoured procedural devices to draw attention to the peace tax campaign, but Ms Mahon has gone further than previously in suggesting a use to which the diverted cash could be used.

Rather than stockpile weapons of destruction, she would like to see a fund which would “break down barriers of race and culture.” Hence the money could be used to promote inter-communal exchanges, east-west visits for ordinary people — “not simply talented sportsmen” but representatives of the community. Alice Mahon sees the fundamental principle at stake as “giving people a choice on how their money is spent.” The campaign may still have a long way to go, but she can see an end in sight in terms of stages — perhaps allowing conscientious objection in fiscal terms to nuclear weapons first, and then extending it to all armaments.

She is aware of the argument that would see such a tax concession, allowing people to make a choice on military matters, as the thin end of the wedge. Would Catholics then be able to divert that part of their taxes that went into NHS coffers to pay for the free distribution of contraceptives to women? Or pro-lifers that part of their fiscal dues that fund NHS abortions?

For Alice Mahon the military argument is a “much larger issue” than either of these two examples, and hence more fundamental to the sound running of a democracy.

If Ms Mahon and the five other newly-elected Labour MPs who have signed the motion are taking parliamentary action to further their cause, others have been more practical. The Peace Tax Campaign has long been associated with the Quakers whose pacifist stance first clashed with state financial policy as long ago as the seventeenth century in Pennsylvania.

However, more recent recruits have been the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Bishop Victor Guazzelli, auxiliary in Westminster, the Welsh Presbyterian Church, and political parties — Plaid Cymru and the Greens — as well as individual MPs from all sides of the House of Commons.

Refusing to pay tax on moral grounds is essentially a personal protest. It is presently only open to those who actually earn a wage large enough to warrant income tax, and in practical terms to those who are self-employed or deal with their own tax matters. The reason for this latter qualification is that if a group of workers, or even an individual worker employed by a company, wants to stop paying a percentage of his or her taxes, it is the employer — who is responsible for PAYE contributions — that will be punished by the Inland Revenue.

One outstanding case of an individual refusing to pay the estimated 13.6 per cent of his taxes that goes to the military budget was that of Quaker Arthur Windsor. On March 5 1986 he was sent to prison for failing to comply with a court order to pay the sum in tax due. Since it was a civil crime Mr Windsor was eligible for no remission, and served his full sentence. On the day of Mr Windsor’s release, Dennis Canavan introduced the PTC’s first parliamentary procedural device.

And Mr Windsor, who is now being forced to pay off his outstanding debt to the revenue by deductions at source from his state pension, was not alone. To date at least 25 war tax resisters, as they refer to themselves, have been taken to court. Yet still a legal right has not been established although one case went as far as the European Commission for Human Rights which ruled that fiscal policy lay without its jurisdiction.

And it is not only individuals who have risked financial loss for their beliefs. Straight Lines Ltd, a jewellery business in Powys in Wales, was taken to Wrexham court in November 1985 for failing to pay 13.6 per cent of PAYE contributions on its seven employees and 30 outworkers. Like many other protestors it deducted that amount and sent a separate cheque to the revenue made out to the Overseas Development Administration.

The court ruled against director Martin Philips who described the action as a personal act which he took on behalf of all those who did not wish to put their employers in an embarrassing situation, but who agreed with the PTC.

Two further court actions by the Inland Revenue followed, and finally in spring of last year the bailiffs came to take assets from Straight Lines to meet the shortfall. After three visits, a till was forced and the tax man satisfied.

Martin Philips has not gone on with his protest, although he does not rule out the possibility at a later date. His debts to the Inland Revenue meant that he received bad listings with credit journals and companies, and consequently his business suffered. He has “no regrets,” but acknowledges that “Straight Lines undoubtedly took a hammering because of it.”

At present there are 3,500 members of the Peace Tax Campaign, but support for it is growing, particularly amongst church bodies and groups. Alice Mahon’s early day motion may never be debated in the chamber, but supporters like Martin Philips and Arthur Windsor will not give up, just as conscientious objectors had to endure vilification and personal loss before their moral conviction was finally recognised in law.

In addition to refusing to withhold taxes from the salaries of tax resisting employees (see The Picket Line for 28 September 2012), employers can also express their solidarity for such resisters by refusing to comply with salary levies. Here are some examples:

• The War Resisters League has a policy of not honoring IRS levies against their employees’ salaries. According to NWTRCC’s guide to organizational war tax resistance, “though the IRS continues from time to time to send levies for other employees, they have not been enforced, and there has been little interaction between the IRS and WRL in recent years.”
• Also according to NWTRCC’s guide, the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund and the Friends Committee on National Legislation have either resisted levies or established policies to resist levies should they occur.
• The “Fifth Avenue Peace Parade Committee,” which helped fuel the anti-Vietnam War movement, refused to turn over to the IRS the paychecks of Eric Weinberger, a war tax resisting employee.
• The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (of Quakers) has a strong and well-thought-through policy on how to respond to IRS levies of the salaries of resisting employees. Excerpt:

  If the conscientious, war-tax-resisting employee requests, in the event that IRS serves a levy on Yearly Meeting against the salary, wages or other employee property alleged to be in the Meeting’s possession, Yearly Meeting will follow the practice approved on April 24, 1975 and decline to submit to the levy. In refusing, the Meeting will set forth its belief that military tax resistance is an appropriate individual expression of the Friends Peace Testimony and that Yearly Meeting is led, consistent with its most fundamental beliefs, to resist government efforts to coerce an employee against their conscience in such historic Friends’ testimonies.

• The New York Yearly Meeting (of Quakers) in 1969 approved a statement in which they agreed that the meeting would refuse to honor salary levies directed at employees who were refusing taxes for conscientious reasons.
• The Baltimore Yearly Meeting of Friends has a similar policy, and responded to one levy by telling the IRS: “The levy would require the Yearly Meeting to act against our employees’ testimony and witness. The Yearly Meeting is not ready to take that step.”
• The Quaker magazine Friends Journal had a policy against paying such levies, and initially refused to pay $31,343 in taxes, penalties, and interest, from the salary of its editor, Vinton Deming. The magazine eventually gave in when it became clear they could not win a legal challenge to the levy.
• The Christian activist group Sojourners has a policy of refusing to comply with government levies of the salaries of its employees who are war tax resisters. Sojourners managing director Joe Roos says, “To date we have been threatened with levies, with the confiscation of our property, with arrest and prison terms and, most recently, with the money we refused to turn over being taken out of my personal account since the IRS views me as a ‘responsible person.’ Despite all these threats, the only action they have taken is to levy our corporate account, taking the amount they say is still due plus interest, plus penalty.”
• When some American Mennonite farmers resisted the Social Security / Medicare tax, the IRS tried to seize the money owed to them by the Amish-run milk cooperatives they worked through. According to Brad Igou, who documented such resistance for the Amish Country News, most cooperative officials refused to comply.
• When the IRS ordered the First & Summerfield United Methodist Church in New Haven, Connecticut, to turn over the salary of their war tax resisting minister, Carl Lundborg, in 1983, the congregation voted unanimously to refuse.
• The IRS tried also to get war tax resisting Catholic pastor Cosmas Raimondi’s parish to turn over his salary to them in 1983, but the parish council refused, saying that “[a]lthough we personally do not feel called to war tax resistance for ourselves, we do support the right of Father Raimondi to make that decision according to the dictates of his own conscience before God.”

One way a tax resistance campaign can claim victory is by convincing the government to either formally rescind the tax, or to recognize the legal validity of tax resistance.

• Charles Ⅰ went around Parliament to create a new property tax, and John Hampden famously said “no” in 1637. He lost his court case, but the next Parliament legalized his resistance by voiding the “ship-writs” tax and declaring the court judgment against him invalid.
• American Amish, after a long campaign of lobbying, lawsuits, civil disobedience, and public relations, successfully won an exemption to the U.S. social security system, including its tax, and also canceled the outstanding social security tax bills of 15,000 Amish resisters.
• A number of pacifist groups, frequently including war tax resisters, have been trying to get their governments to recognize or legally formalize a right to conscientious objection to military spending that would permit conscientious objectors to pay their taxes in a way that would not pay for the military portion of the government’s budget: a “Peace Tax” as it were. So far, none of these long-standing efforts — which have included legal challenges using a variety of arguments, lobbying, and appeals to international legal bodies — have borne much fruit. Governments seem universally hostile to the idea, and those international legal bodies with any clout have been unwilling to push the point.
  • Besides this, it is difficult to separate a government’s military budget from the rest of its budget in a way that would make a separate “Peace Tax” plausible. The American version of the “Peace Tax” legislation, for instance, would ironically result in more taxpayer money going to military projects. Italy has an otto per mille tax, which people can designate either for their church or for “humanitarian and cultural projects” of the government’s choosing — this resembles the sort of plan the “Peace Tax” promoters have in mind, but Italy’s government cunningly declared its participation in the Iraq War a “humanitarian and cultural” project and siphoned the funds off that way.
• A tax resister who was opposed to the death penalty came to an agreement with the state of Delaware in which the state permitted him to pay his state taxes into a fund designated for paying state tax refunds of other taxpayers, rather than into the general fund that funded the prison system and executions.
• American Quaker war tax resister Joshua Evans was so persistent that eventually the tax collector gave up. “I was told it was concluded that as I gave myself up very much to the service of Truth, it was not proper I should be troubled on account of military demands; and I understood my name was erased, or taken from their list.” Occasionally something similar happens today, when because a war tax resister has so few assets, or those assets would take too much trouble to discover, the IRS formally lists the resister’s file as “uncollectible” and gives up the attempt to force payment. After ten years, a delinquent income tax payment hits a statute of limitations and the U.S. government is generally forbidden to pursue the matter further.
• American suffragist activist Sarah E. Wall resisted her taxes for 25 years, when finally, according to Susan B. Anthony, “I do not know exactly how it is now, but the assessor has left her name off the tax-list, and passed her by rather than have a lawsuit with her.” Something similar happened to English suffragist tax resister Charlotte Despard and some others: “[T]he Government rather than go to the trouble of selling up the recalcitrant ‘debtor,’ and attracting attention to the principle involved, had quietly dropped the matter in several instances. Mrs. Despard had had no application for taxes since she had been sold up last year.”
• Ellen C. Sargent patiently pursued legal challenges in California to try to promote women’s suffrage with a “no taxation without representation” argument. She began by petitioning the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for a refund of her property taxes, and then filed a lawsuit when this petition was denied (the lawsuit also failed).
• When farmers in drought-ravaged regions of Argentina threatened a tax strike in 2009, the government responded with a clever bit of ju-jitsu — it declared an agricultural emergency in the area which exempted those farmers from paying taxes.
• Utah governor J. Bracken Lee stopped paying his federal income taxes in the hopes of prompting a Supreme Court test case that would invalidate what he considered to be extraconstitutional federal spending. (The court declined to take his case.)
• A group referred to as “the Texas housewives” resisted paying the social security tax on the salaries of their household help, and pursued a two-year parallel legal challenge to have the tax invalidated, before finally being turned down by the U.S. Supreme Court.
• Property tax resisters in Depression-era Chicago won a court case that found property assessments in the city to have been performed incorrectly — with $15 billion in property held by wealthy, well-connected Chicagoans somehow left off the rolls — thus effectively legalizing the resistance. “As the matter stands,” a newspaper account put it, “citizens howled about their taxes, refused to pay them and a court upheld them. They are in revolt with legal sanction.”
• During the Land League’s rent strike in Ireland, Charles Stewart Parnell reported that “a large majority of landlords” reduced the rents on their properties, “[which] shows that they did finally recognize the situation, and that they determined to make the best of it.”
• When the Prussian quasi-autocracy tried to ignore the legislature and govern on its own, the legislature formally declared tax resistance to be legal, and said that the autocrats had no authority to raise or spend money. Something similar happened in Russia half a century later, when the Czar dissolved the legislature, which then reconvened in Vyborg and called on the citizens to refuse to pay any more taxes to the Czar.
• According to a book on war tax resistance: “In 1820 Russia became the first country to establish legislation exempting pacifists from paying war taxes. Thirty British citizens were invited by Czar Alexander Ⅰ to establish a cotton mill. Because some of the employees were Quakers, a petition was submitted to the Czar from the employees asking for freedom of conscience and an exemption from military service, church taxes for war, etc. The Czar issued a certificate which read ‘His Imperial Majesty has given his gracious assent to this petition … all … shall be exempted from all civil and military taxes … the sect of Quakers may now and in future be freed from war taxes for the support of the Military…’ Two English Quakers visiting Russia in 1856 found these provisions still in effect.”
• The Great Confederated Anti-Dray and Land Tax League of South Australia began as a tax resistance and mutual insurance group, but was soon successful in convincing the government to rescind the offensive tax.

But history is also full of lessons about the foolishness of trusting the government when it responds to your tax resistance campaign by insisting that it’s on your side and wants to help. For example:

• When tax resistance leader Wat Tyler was assassinated while negotiating with the King in 1379, the king boldly went out to the enraged crowd and told it that he would be their leader and would press for their demands. Instead, he waited for the fuss to die down, then executed some of the other leaders of the rebellion.
• When the Whigs were whisked into power in the wake of the Reform Act agitation around 1832, the tax resistance movement celebrated its victory… only to find that the Whigs could be just as tyrannical about prosecuting those who promoted tax resistance as their Tory cousins.
• The recent American TEA Party was quickly coöpted by the Republican Party, which learned how to lead it by the nose with witless rhetoric, but conceded nothing on the tax-and-spend big government front.
• During the Annuity Tax strike in Edinburgh, the government passed something called the “Edinburgh Annuity Tax Abolition Act.” Despite its name, that act did not abolish the annuity tax, but merely concealed it with an aim to making it more difficult to resist.

Conference report, part 1: The State of the COMT Movement

The 14^th International Conference on War Tax Resistance and Peace Tax Campaigns gave conscientious objectors to military taxation from around the world a chance to compare notes on activities in their countries.

Many groups reported a greying, shrinking movement that struggles to maintain enthusiasm or to make significant headway on primary goals. There were a few bits of news that I thought were especially worthy of note:

Conscience UK’s Market Analysis and Message Revamp

Conscience UK took the step of asking a professional consultant to do a market analysis. They identified a market segment that is particularly susceptible to the COMT message, and also learned that their messaging was flawed: the new generation identifies the term “conscientious objector” as being archaic and not relevant to them.

Conscience UK has responded to this by recharacterizing its campaign from one that supports conscientious objection to military spending into one that promotes nonmilitary security solutions and wants to give citizens the option to fund them instead of the military. It is collecting examples of successful nonviolent conflict prevention/resolution groups and actions, which it hopes to promote in a “Meet the Real Peacekeepers” campaign. It is also developing a strategy game (tentatively titled “Spend & Defend”) which it hopes to use to highlight how using nonviolent conflict prevention/resolution tactics is more effective and less costly than relying on military solutions.

The Norwegian Peace Fund

Another innovative idea comes from Norway. Activists there are forming what they call the Norges Fredsfond (Norwegian Peace Fund) and are soliciting taxpayers to donate to the fund. When they reach a critical mass of contributors the fund will gain tax-exempt status, and so these donations will reduce the contributors’ taxes at their marginal tax rate (typically 28%, according to Fund promotor Øystein Øgaard — which means that, at least from one way of looking at it, an objector can offset his or her war tax by contributing about three times the amount of the tax to the fund).

The fund is being designed as though it were a government-run peace tax fund accepting tax dollars that would then fund peace-promoting projects. They hope that by laying the groundwork of creating and running such a fund, they will be better able to convince the government to legalize COMT and absorb the fund as the lawful COMT alternative fund.

Peace Tax Funds

Other than the Norwegian proposal (which is just getting off the ground), there is little new to report on the Peace Tax front. There are many organizations in many countries working for this, and one international group nominally devoted to the same task, but none are making any headway or reporting any big changes in their approaches. Belgium’s campaign is dormant for lack of activist support, and Germany has suspended lobbying activity after their lobbying campaign resulted in negligible results.

Those of you who are following the U.S. version of the legislation can be assured that it will be introduced again this year, without any anticipated changes. The number of cosponsors for the House bill shrunk to eight last year, and four of those have now moved on from the House (the bill was not introduced in the Senate), so this is a challenge. The National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund has set a goal of 19 cosponsors in the House and a sponsor in the Senate this year.

Tactical Innovation

I gave a presentation on the variety of tactics used by tax resistance campaigns throughout history and around the world to augment their campaigns, and tried to explain how reviewing these tactics and those campaigns might help us craft our campaigns to be more successful. You can find the slides I used in this presentation on-line if you’d like a better idea of what I was talking about.

War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in 1961

By 1961, war tax resistance, or at least increased anxiety about paying war taxes, has surfaced in the Society of Friends, and we can see evidence of this in the pages of Friends Journal from that year.

Groping towards a “peace tax” plan

The war tax resister’s equivalent to the alchemist’s “philosopher’s stone” is the “peace tax” — which is capable of turning the leaden bullets of taxes for war into the golden promise of taxes only for the nice things. Like the philosopher’s stone, its existence has been theorized a great deal and demonstrated very little. In 1961, Friends began their search for the legendary beast.

In the 15 February issue is a mention that the Peace Committee of the Pacific Yearly Meeting had begun circulating a preliminary plan for something it called a “civilian income tax bill” in order “to sound out the interest of the peace movement before deciding whether to press for legislation, and specifically to get reactions to the stipulation that pacifists taking advantage of paying into the suggested alternative, UNICEF, would be willing to be taxed an extra five per cent. No other test of religious objection to military defense, such as is presently required of draft age C.O.s is proposed.” Egbert Hayes of Claremont, California, is given as the contact person for this effort.

A follow-up article in the 15 September issue draws the comparison between this effort and the ongoing effort of some of the Amish to win a conscientious objection from the social security system, but notes that “little support has been found [for conscientious objection to military taxation] from the newspaper writers and members of Congress who defended the Amish.”

In reply to the suggestion that conscientious citizens should have a right to “vote with their tax dollars” for alternatives to war, Senator Joseph S. Clark wrote that this “would cause great harm to our country’s fiscal system.”

He may have anticipated that those “voting” in such a way would be much more numerous than the members of small sects or groups, since many who do not think of themselves as pacifists might agree that there is a dangerous disproportion between the national expenditures for military threats and for the winning of world friendship.

Some thought had been given to the possibility that if “civilian” tax payers paid their money to UNICEF, Congress might simply reduce its own $12 million contributions to UNICEF and divert that money back to the non-civilian budget. Also:

The Claremont bill, better as a proof of sincerity than the questionnaire method used by draft boards (who are no experts in theology), calls for tax payments that are five per cent greater than the computed tax and for publication of names. The latter we could achieve now without waiting for an act of Congress. Willingness to take an unpopular stand before one’s community is a surer test of conscience than any judicial inquisition. And it is exactly the thing needed if we are to influence opinion.

As shown by many cases of war-tax refusers who have had property seized, there may be no real alternative to the payment of a required number of dollars by those of a certain income level. Some write a protest on their tax returns, but this kind of protest, like the secret ballot, is far from enough. As John Sykes pointed out in his book on The Quakers: A New Look at Their Place in Society, the prosperity and bourgeois status of the Quakers after their years of persecution silenced them in more ways than one. And they are not more silenced than thousands of their natural allies, unknown and isolated, having other religious or nontheistic backgrounds. It is not a Hamlet’s conscience that “makes cowards of us all,” but the structure of society with its oligarchy or power elite controlling most forms of employment and mass media.

The article continues in this vein for a while, explaining why it’s so difficult to stand up and dissent, and how even those who work up the courage to do so are so frequently drowned out, dismissed, or ignored.

[W]hy should not each Meeting, each local peace group, write its own statement, secure signatures from as many sympathizers as possible, and distribute copies? The actionists do not always take time for reasoning or for a dignified approach that will persuade people to hear their reasons. But they are right: reasoning is not enough. It takes the combination of reason and personal courage; it takes individual decisions which do not wait for either our own or enemy governments to disarm. We can rarely escape taxes, but we can speak.

There was another movement gaining interest in Quaker circles around this time, in which people were voluntarily taxing themselves one or two percent of their incomes and sending this money to the United Nations, which, at that time, was still seen by many people to have potential as a sort of global arbitrator or adjudicator that might “take away the occasion of war” (this in the face of the fact that the U.N. had recently authorized the U.S. war in Korea). I don’t see much evidence of overlap between the people advocating this and the people rekindling interest in war tax resistance, but the fact that this was in the air probably helped to shape the “peace tax” plans and redirection efforts that followed. One note in the 1 September 1962 issue does seem to suggest that war tax redirection was one motivation for people participating in this voluntary U.N. tax project:

An opinion of the legal department of the United Nations has made clear that gifts to the U.N. or to its specialized agencies are not tax-deductible.

Any checks sent directly to the controller of the United Nations should be marked for a specific program to avoid having them go to the general fund of the U.N. and thereby merely reduce the assessments of member governments.

Here’s another note of interest on this topic, from the 1 August issue:

The Friends Meeting at Pittsburgh, Pa., has expressed publicly its serious concern for the Amish farmer whose work horses were recently seized by the Internal Revenue Service for nonpayment of social security taxes. Friends see in this infringement upon an act of conscience a much broader threat against all those who will not cooperate with the government in support of war and preparation for war. They point to the alternative of voluntary payments to special U.N. funds in addition to income tax payments.

Maurice McCrackin

In 1961, the Presbytery of Cincinnati began defrocking the Reverend Maurice McCrackin, ostensibly because they thought his war tax resistance was unbecoming of a minister (some suspect it was his work against racial segregation that really raised the ire of his foes — his church was the first in Cincinnati to be integrated). The Friends Journal kept an eye on the case.

In the 15 February issue, a contributor notes that the racially-mixed children’s camp “Camp Joy” was having financial difficulty because of the church action against McCracken, the camp’s administrator.

The Camp Joy Committee has this past year purchased a 314-acre farm as a new site since in 1959 the Cincinnati Park Board refused to turn on the water at the previous site, which was Park Board property, because of the income-tax stand of two staff members.

It seems unlikely that a regional park board would actually have a policy of refusing to turn on the water for clients who were behind on their federal income taxes, so I’m giving the benefit of the doubt to those who suspect that animosity to his racial integration projects was probably behind the trouble.

The 1 March issue noted that “Almost every day brings to the Journal office fresh protests or statements opposing the military venture of the United States in Vietnam.” One of these came from McCracken:

Copies of an appeal to those who wish to withdraw their support from war (particularly the U.S. war in Vietnam) by refusing to pay all or part of their income taxes or by reducing their incomes to a nontaxable level are available from the No Tax for War in Vietnam Committee, c/o the Reverend Maurice McCrackin, 932 Dayton Street, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Incorporated in the appeal is a statement to which tax-refusers can sign their names and addresses. Signed statements sent to Maurice McCrackin before the April 15 tax deadline will be used by the Committee as the basis for releasing to the press on that day names and addresses of the signers. The Committee suggests also that copies of the statement be printed in publications, posted on bulletin boards, and read in meetings by those who have signed them.

The 15 March issue had a larger article about the Presbytery’s inquisition against McCracken. Excerpts:

The presbytery has shown inconsistency and indecision… In October, 1959, after Maurice McCrackin’s release from prison, the presbytery issued a statement of support, saying, “Rev. McCrackin has not broken his ordination vows. It is not the function of the presbytery to collect taxes, and we find the West Cincinnati-St. Barnabas Church and its pastor are bearing a strong witness to Jesus Christ.”

Maurice McCrackin was tried in a civil trial in 1958, but the charge was not his nonpayment of income tax for the past eleven years. He was charged only with not answering a summons to come to the Bureau of Internal Revenue. He was carried into the courtroom because he would not walk, and he would not stand before the judge. On this charge he served a six-month term at Allenwood Federal Prison.

“All the while our community work was expanding,” he recalled in a sermon on the Sunday before the first hearing of the trial, “cold war tensions were increasing. Nuclear bombs were fast being stockpiled, and reports were heard of new and deadlier weapons about to be made. Fresh in my mind were the bombed cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.… If churches, settlement houses, schools, if anything were to survive in Cincinnati or anywhere else, something must be done about the armaments race.… I preached about the dangers which the entire world faced.… I was preaching, but what was I doing?

“If I can honestly say that Jesus would support conscription,” he concluded, “throw a hand grenade, or with a flame thrower drive men out of caves to become living torches, if I believe he would release the bomb over Hiroshima or Nagasaki, then I not only have the right to do these things as a Christian; I am even obligated to do them. But if I believe that Jesus would do none of these things, then I have no choice but to refuse, at whatever personal cost, to support war.”

The charges are:

1. The Rev. Maurice McCrackin has resisted the ordinances of God, in that upon pretense of Christian liberty he has opposed the civil lawful power, and the lawful exercise of it…
2. He has published erroneous opinions and maintained practices which are destructive to the external peace and order which Christ hath established in the Church…
3. He has failed to obey the lawful commands and to be subject to the authority of civil magistrates, [all these actions being]… contrary to the Constitution of the United Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. (Confession of Faith, chapter 20, paragraph 4, and chapter 23, paragraph 4).

Specifications of these charges include the withholding of income tax, the failure to file returns, and advocating that others do the same.

“I felt free,” said Maurice McCrackin, when he was in the grip of the criminal court. “I could not have walked. I doubt if my feet would have functioned. Had I walked I would have felt I was in prison, but in not walking I felt that I was free.… It may be that the authorities will again take possession of my body; but it is my earnest purpose, God being my helper, that no man, no circumstance, no place shall be allowed to take possession of my spirit and my conscience.”

In its 15 June issue, Friends Journal reported the Presbytery’s decision to suspend McCracken, and McCracken’s decision to appeal.

A follow-up in the 15 October issue noted “the strangeness of a verdict that acquiesces in the motivation of the defendant but in effect finds him ‘guilty’ for failure to test the income tax law in the civil court. The seeds of the presbytery trial go back three years,” according to Christian Century commentator Virgie Bernhardt, a Quaker, “to reactionary forces stirred up in the community by McCrackin’s integration activities.”

A further follow-up in the 1 November issue noted that McCracken’s appeal “to the Permanent Judicial Commission of the United Presbyterian Synod of Ohio” was accepted. The Commission “rebuked the Cincinnati presbytery for its ‘unduly severe’ judgment and the lack of proof that the minister had disturbed the peace of the Church, as the local presbytery had charged.” They told the local presbytery to try again.

The following year, in the 1 September 1962 issue, a brief notice mentions that the United Presbyterian General Assembly approved McCracken’s dismissal, and notes that 28 members of his church have split off from the Presbyterians as a result and have formed a new church under McCracken’s ministry.

It’s hard not to see all of this attention given to an internal battle in another church as a proxy for an anticipated controversy that was just beginning to stir in the Society of Friends.

(McCracken would return to the pages of the Journal to tell his own story in the 15 May 1980 issue.)

Other war tax resistance mentions

A report on the Switzerland Yearly Meeting in the 15 February issue read: “We were stimulated by the call to action and the living witness of several Swiss Friends who regularly refuse to pay their taxes for military expenditure and then bear the consequences.”

The 15 March issue includes a letter to the editor from J.H. Davenport in which he writes, “I would be glad if through the Friends Journal it could be made known that some Friends (at least one) regret that some members feel it right to participate in so-called ‘civil defense’ activities, ‘national defense’ contracts, and the payment of income taxes, the major portion of which goes to so-called ‘defense’ activities of the national government, especially when the name of Friends is used as a sort of endorsement. ¶ I have taken the liberty of painting in the word ‘SOME’ in front of the poster that I have been carrying during my lunch hour in front of the New York City Civil Defense headquarters. The poster now reads, more truthfully, ‘SOME Quakers say No to All War.’…”

The 1 June issue has one of the earliest mentions of a Quaker meeting formally encouraging war tax resistance:

Yellow Springs Meeting, Ohio, has been deeply concerned about support of the national defense policy through payment of federal income taxes. Some of the members have chosen to be conscientious tax refusers. The following is an excerpt from a statement approved by the Meeting in early March: “We recognize that payment of federal income tax, like service in the armed forces, is a demand which may properly move Quakers and other responsible citizens to take a position of conscientious objection.

“Provided their action is imbued with a spirit of humble honesty and loving social or religious dedication, we support both those who are conscientiously impelled to pay their taxes in full, and those who undertake conscientious resistance to war taxes. Such conscientious resistance may take many forms: refusing to pay part or all of the tax, refusing to file a return, working only at a job where no tax is withheld from wages, intentionally keeping one’s income so low that it is not taxable, resisting coercion by tax collectors, courts, and their agents, supporting other resistors and their families, and giving public testimony and witness. We feel that persons undertaking nonviolent civil disobedience should be prepared to accept the consequences.

“We urge Congress and the President to consider legislation permitting conscientious tax objectors to choose alternative service for that portion of their tax dollars which would otherwise be assigned to military purposes.”

War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in 1992

There was a great deal about war tax resistance in the Friends Journal in 1992, in part because of the occupation of the Randy Kehler/Betsy Corner home which the IRS was trying to auction off, and in part because of the IRS suit against the Journal to try to force it to pay its editor’s resisted taxes, and in part because of the Peace Tax Fund bill’s first congressional hearing.

A note in the January issue pointed out that politicians were playing a name game that had apparently fooled some Quakers into thinking that the telephone excise tax had been transformed into something benign:

The telephone tax continues as a source of money for military expenditure, contrary to recent confusion about its status. The tax, which was due to expire in December 1990, was extended under the Act for Better Child Care. Those who proposed the act were searching for a way to finance their new program and seized upon the telephone tax as their “new” source of money. However, the phone tax revenues continue to go into the General Fund, as always, and are not earmarked for the child care programs. More than 50 percent of the General Fund is used for military expenditure. The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee recommends that conscientious resistance to the telephone tax continue, as it can have a powerful impact if enough people are involved.

That issue also had a follow-up on the “Alternative Revenue Service” protest:

In 1991, the Alternative Revenue Service reports that individuals redirected $104,740 of their federal income taxes away from the military to areas of human need. The total includes $12,898 redirected through the ARS, $38,416 redirected by Alternative Funds, and $53,426 that individuals redirected to social action and relief programs. The Alternative Revenue Service campaign is designed to educate taxpayers about how their federal income tax dollars are used. The service provides the EZ Peace Form, which participants can use in registering their opposition to military spending at the time they file their taxes. The service reports that 70,000 EZ Peace Forms were distributed nationwide last year. This year’s form is simplified, with clearer instructions.

The February issue brought the news that the Peace Tax Fund promoters had finally managed to get a Congressional Committee hearing for their bill, which was scheduled for that Spring. “The hearing will be informational to determine the need for such legislation, not a preparation for floor action. The need is assessed from the testimony of both individuals and religious bodies. The hearing will support the bill by providing a permanent public record, by lending it legitimacy, by possibly attracting more serious consideration from prospective cosponsors, and by providing a record of congressional scrutiny. The hearing will be brief, not lending itself to extended exchanges. However, written testimony can be added and will become part of the official record.”

A follow-up in April described the latest Peace Tax Fund bill as one that “would amend the Internal Revenue Code to permit qualified conscientious objectors to have part of their federal taxes — that part equal to the military portion of the federal budget — to be paid into a fund for peace-related projects.” It encouraged readers to submit “written testimony for the official hearing record,” to publicize and perhaps attend the hearing, to contact Congressional representatives and encourage them to attend and to support the bill, and to donate money to the cause.

The August issue described how the 21 May hearing before the House Subcommittee on Select Revenue Measures went — “the first actual hearing held since a Peace Tax Fund Bill was first introduced in Congress 20 years ago.” Excerpts:

“If we give the right to a person to withhold their body from a war as a conscientious objector, that person should be able to withhold his money as well.”

So spoke Sen. Mark Hatfield in his lead-off testimony…

…Several hundred spectators from across the country packed the hearing room. Many attended as concerned individual taxpayers. Others came as members of religious denominations and peace groups long associated with the Peace Tax Campaign. Three chartered buses, one from Lancaster, Pa., two others from Philadelphia, swelled the numbers by some 150 supporters. When the last of them filed in from a late-arriving bus to find all spectator seats occupied, Chairman Charles Rangel stopped the hearings momentarily, inviting standing-room only observers to move forward and to occupy empty seats normally reserved for officials and the press. Many did so. Veterans of peace demonstrations, several parents holding small children, young bearded men in simple dress, older couples from the peace churches created a colorful patchwork as they mixed with congressional aides, heads of foundations, and Capitol bureaucrats in business suits.

…Over 2,300 letters in support of the Peace Tax Fund Bill were bound in large volumes and set on a front table to be presented to the committee. From 50–100 such letters a day continued to arrive as of the time of the hearing.

Following the introductory testimony of Mark Hatfield, lead sponsor of the bill (S.689) in the Senate, there were also presentations by four members of Congress: Andy Jacobs (lead sponsor of the bill in the House), Nancy Pelosi, and John Conyers.…

…[A] panel of religious leaders testified. One, Thomas Gumbleton, Roman Catholic bishop from Detroit, and past president of Pax Christi, pointed out that two of the first leaders of the church, John and Peter, said that sometimes it is necessary to obey God before obeying the law. How much better it would be, Gumbleton said, for COs to be able to pay all their taxes, knowing their money would be used for life-affirming purposes.

William Davidson, retired Episcopal bishop of western Kansas, a CO in World War Ⅱ, has actively opposed war since 1939. “Having lived past draft age, I have been saddened and conflicted each year having to pay taxes to support war,” he said. The Episcopal Peace Fellowship has consistently supported war tax resistance as a religious witness.

John A. Lapp, executive secretary of Mennonite Central Committee, Akron, Pa., spoke on behalf of the three historic peace churches (Mennonites, Quakers, and Church of the Brethren). The issue of war-related taxes is one of religious freedom, Lapp said. “Many of us feel the pain of having our religious institutions serve as tax collectors for war.”

During committee questioning, Representative Jacobs asked Rabbi [Phil] Bentley [with the Jewish Peace Fellowship], “Is [passage of this bill] going to give rise to requests for similar legislation from people who don’t want their money going for a golf course?”

…[Friends Journal] editor-manager Vint Deming, associate editor Melissa Elliott, typesetter Susan Jordhamo, and board members Robert Sutton and Sam Legg joined several hundred other citizens in packing the hearing room…

The hearing was informational, to give legislators material to use in future considerations, rather than to schedule the bill for action. As such, it gave supporters a chance to formally present the case, get testimony in the written record, and show the depth and breadth of people’s interest in the bill.

The pace of this legislative process is frustratingly slow, but, for many of us, the hearing was a heartening experience. There, we heard people testify in a formal legislative setting to our most deeply held beliefs. One activist-participant said, “All my life I’ve been on the side that opposes government decisions. It was a weird experience to see all those peace movement people in the same room with legislators. I’ve never seen anything like that before, nor ever imagined it. It gave me a different vision of what might be possible.”

The Peace Tax Fund Bill has come a long way since its introduction in 1972, with many technical refinements, and it has a long way to go in gathering widespread support. On May 21 we witnessed one small step in validation, acknowledgment of our beliefs, and moving the dream closer to reality. Perhaps one day we will look back, as do those who watched the process of legalizing conscientious objection, and be glad we were involved in making it legal to follow our beliefs with our money-as well as with our bodies.

“This is not a political issue, but a moral issue of conscience,” responded Bentley…

Jacobs, in response, thanked the Rabbi and others of religious conscience who had testified. “I am a sponsor of this bill,” he said, “but I am not a pacifist.” He called to mind one of his favorite movies, Friendly Persuasion, and the lines spoken toward the end of the film: “It’s good to know that somebody is holding out for a better way of settling things!”

Terrill Hyde, tax legislative counsel for the Department of the Treasury, presented the Bush Administration position opposing the PTF. She mentioned “problems of complexity, confusion, and increased administrative burden,” sure to arise if the bill were passed. There would be no deterrent either, she said, to restrain taxpayers from inappropriately claiming CO status. If taxpayers were allowed to designate the uses for which their tax dollars were spent, “our entire budgetary process would be undermined.” There would likely be loss of revenue to needed federal programs.

Others, however, presented differing views. Several speakers argued that there would likely be substantial increases in revenue as a direct result of the bill. Many who currently refuse to pay a portion or all of their taxes would gladly pay. Also, large costs resulting from IRS efforts to collect from tax resisters would be avoided. Answering the criticism of how the act might increase paperwork and administrative costs, several people testified to the simple nature of the bill and of the tax filing process.

As to IRS claims that the bill raises possible legal questions, a panel of two law specialists responded. Mark Tushnet, professor of law at Georgetown University, said, “A nation that wants to protect the religious freedom of its citizens can reasonably be expected to enact legislation to enable the freedom to be expressed.” It seems perfectly appropriate, he concluded, that such legislation be enacted. “It is needed in addition to the Religious Freedom Act.”

Philadelphia, Pa., attorney and war tax specialist Peter Goldberger agreed. “Legislation of this kind has a noble history in our country,” and he quoted from a 1790 letter from then-President George Washington to Philadelphia Quakers. The nation’s laws, Washington wrote, must always be “extensively accommodated” in cases of individual conscience.

Alan Eccleston, a Quaker and an organizational development consultant from Hadley, Massachusetts, told about how, in his own tax witness, he has endured penalties, punishments, and the threat of losing his home. The IRS has a lien on his house right now. “Conscience must be taken into account. Spiritual values are real. They are not to be treated as incidental or expendable to fit the needs of the state. This is what the First Amendment is all about.”

Ruth Flower, legislative secretary of Friends Committee on National Legislation, emphasized that the Peace Tax Fund Act would not offer an escape to those who do not wish to pay their taxes, because they would have to pay the same amount either way. It would, however, provide a legal way out of violating one’s religious beliefs in order to comply with the laws of the land.

Her point was born out by Patricia Washburn, who gave perhaps the most moving testimony of the hearing. She talked about the challenge presented to each of us, and to her personally, in Micah 6:8: “…what does the Lord require of you but to act justly, to love constantly, and to walk humbly with your God?” Walking humbly requires us to acknowledge the seeds of violence in our own hearts, rather than projecting them onto someone else. “Loving constantly” can be a discouraging and difficult task, especially in today’s climate of distrust and alienation.

“I am not opposed to paying taxes, but I find no alternative form of tax payment… Thus, I see no current alternative to withholding the military portion of my taxes… I pray that my witness is done in love and that it will help to build a bridge across the chasm of violence and fear.”

After the hearing and following the press conference, [Marian] Franz [executive director of the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund] gave a brief workshop on lobbying for the bill. She pointed out that the testimony would now be entered in written record and could be referred to in the future. She added, “the fact that we got a hearing is absolutely amazing.” Many other pieces of legislation have not yet been so lucky, and the demand is great. “If all members of the committee had been present, they all would have been deeply moved, and we would be a lot further down the road.”

Franz encouraged people, when lobbying, to talk in terms of conscience, as defined by Pope John ⅩⅩⅢ, who said, “Deep inside, each one of us finds a law that we did not put there. It tells us to do this and shun that.” That is what puts the issue of paying taxes for war in the arena of religious decisions and touches on every individual’s right to follow their faith — whether they are housewives, bureaucrats, lawyers, teachers, or politicians.

That is why it is important to keep trying to open doors and ears and minds. Marian Franz has a suggestion for how to approach people: “Talk to aides and legislators as though you’re sharing something personally. You will often find that when you are talking about conscience, people are moved deeply.”

The February issue also plugged “Good Use: Songs of Peace, Tax & Conscience” — “a tape of War Tax Resister Songs, featuring Charlie King, Luci Murphy, Geof Morgan, Lifeline, and others. It was produced by Don Walsh, who donates the royalties.”

The lead editorial (by Vinton Deming) in the March issue concerned the ongoing Randy Kehler/Betsy Corner case:

Finding Affinity

Randy Kehler and his wife, Betsy Corner, have been tax resisters since 1977. They have given the tax money instead to a variety of groups doing constructive community work. Since 1989 the IRS has been trying to sell their house in Colrain, Mass., in an effort to collect $25,896 in back taxes — but it hasn’t been easy.

First of all, there’s been a growing tax resistance movement there in Franklin County. Bob Bady and Pat Morse, for instance, had their house seized and auctioned in 1989. (They still live in the house, however, and the buyer hasn’t taken possession.) Shelburn Falls dentist Tom Wilson had his dental license revoked when he refused to cooperate with IRS. (He continues his practice, however; even the local sheriff remains one of his regular patients).

So when the word got out that IRS planned to auction Betsy and Randy’s house, supporters in large numbers turned up on the announced day to oppose the sale. There were lots of signed bids (such as an offer to clean the teeth of an IRS agent, others pledging to do community work or to be peace activists for life) — but no cash buyers came forward. Not a one.

So, in November 1991, IRS upped the ante. Betsy, Randy, and daughter Lillian, 12, were given an eviction notice. When Randy decided to stay, he was held in contempt and tossed in the county jail for 6 months.

This didn’t go unnoticed by friends and neighbors, however. A sign-up sheet got circulated, and volunteers committed themselves to stay in the house around the clock. There’s been a continuous presence there since December 3. Groups from as far away as Washington, D.C., have signed up to come and help out. In early January, members of Mount Toby (Mass.) Meeting formed such an affinity group for a week.

Meanwhile, Randy stays in jail and makes the most of his time there. He has made friends with many of the prisoners, has organized a chess tournament, and does what he can to interpret his tax witness. Allan Eccleston, member of Mount Toby Meeting, has been approved as the meeting’s official minister and visits Randy twice a week.

So what’s next? IRS has scheduled another auction, this time out of the area in Springfield, Mass. — in the hope, it seems, of attracting a buyer for the house, someone who doesn’t know about this whole chain of events. Randy will not be there to talk about it, but lots of his friends will. Even if the house is sold, the issue will be far from over. The house is part of a land trust (Randy and Betsy own the house but not the land on which it stands) — and there’s the likelihood of a continuing nonviolent presence in the house to welcome any potential new buyer.

How might Friends respond? I asked this question in late January of Francis Crowe, long-time head of the American Friends Service Committee office in western Massachusetts and a supporter of Randy and Betsy. She suggests:

• Form an affinity group to help sustain the presence in the house. (To be scheduled, contact Traprock Peace Center…
• Funds are also needed to support the action (checks made out to “War Tax Refusers Support Committee”…).
• Letters to the editor on the subject of taxes and militarism are always helpful.
• More sponsors are needed in Congress for the Peace Tax Fund bill.…

At a rally last fall in support of Betsy and Randy, Juanita Nelson — who, with husband Wally, has been a tax refuser for decades and is known to many Friends — offered these words by Goethe: “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has Genius, Power, and Magic in it.” Good advice as another tax season is upon us, when many of us seek to find our way on this difficult question of taxes for war.

In a later issue, David Zarembka reported in a letter-to-the-editor about how the occupation / blockade of the Kehler/Corner home was proceeding:

On Feb. 12, federal marshalls arrested seven members of the Flowing River Affinity Group who were occupying the Kehler/Corner home and removed the furniture into storage. At 2 p.m. that same day, the IRS sold the house to the highest bidder in an auction for $5,400. The seven affinity group members were released from jail later in the afternoon. So was Randy, who had served two months of his sentence.

Do not think, however, that Betsy and Randy have lost their home in an exotic cause! As soon as the federal marshalls left the house, an affinity group reoccupied it, and other groups, including one from Washington, D.C., of which I am a member, have continued to occupy the house on a 24-hour basis. Affinity groups, which occupy the home for a week each, have been organizing since late 1989, but new ones are still being formed…

The “buyers,” a young couple with a two-month-old son, have visited the house several times but have not as yet forced the issue. They are consulting with their lawyers. Betsy and Randy have become members of the Colrain Neighbors Affinity Group, which will occupy the home for the week beginning April 16. They and their twelve-year-old daughter, Lillian, will move back into their home when they can comfortably live there once again.

I would hope that this action would lead Friends to consider how their cooperation with the federal tax collection process — even those who are symbolic tax resisters or those who force the IRS to take their taxes from them — allows the present military system to thrive.

A report in that issue on the Canadian Yearly Meeting that had taken place the previous Fall noted that:

Canadian Yearly Meeting, in its role of employer, was asked to refuse to remit that portion of its employees’ taxes that will be used to support the military. Concern was expressed by the yearly meeting’s trustees, who would bear the legal results of such actions. Although the yearly meeting came close to supporting a minute for this action, it agreed to seek clearness with the trustees and monthly meetings and return to this issue next year.

The May issue was largely devoted to war tax resistance. It began with an editorial from Vinton Deming concerning his war tax resistance and the response of his employer, the Journal. Excerpt:

From the outset, I knew it wasn’t a very practical thing to do. The government was too powerful, and all the tax laws were against me. I’d just end up paying much more in the end, so why not choose a better way to work for peace? A good letter to my congressman, for instance, or a tax vigil at the federal building on Apri1 15.

But this was in the late 1970s. Our war in Vietnam was just over, but the Cold War continued. As the Reagan years unfolded, with still larger military expenditures and big cuts in domestic programs, I became even more clear: I must resist as fully as possible the payment of taxes for war.

The Journal board was always supportive of my witness. It refused twice to honor IRS levies on my wages. In doing so, Friends openly accepted the possibility of being taken to court one day and fined severely. The board wrote to IRS: “Our position of noncompliance to the requests of the Internal Revenue Service is not an easy one. We do not question the laws of the land lightly, but do so under the weight of a genuine religious and moral concern.”

Well, as they say, “What goes ’round comes ’round.” This February, Friends Journal was told by the U.S. Justice Department to pay up or we’d be taken to court.…

I am grateful for the steadfastness of the Journal’s board of managers. Since the board first addressed the tax issue in 1979, it has been faithful to the Quaker peace testimony. The road has been an uncertain and confusing one at many points, but Friends have shown courage in continuing.

In my own personal war tax journey, these words by John Stoner have served to guide: “We are war tax resisters because we have discovered some doubt as to what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God, and have decided to give the benefit of the doubt to God.”

Sam Legg, clerk of the Friends Journal Board of Managers, gave his take on the Deming situation and on why the Journal had decided to throw in the towel and pay the IRS’s demands. Excerpts:

[F]rom 1979 to 1983… Vinton refused to pay any federal taxes. Each tax year he sent a blank 1040 along with a letter to the president explaining his opposition to war and his unwillingness as a Friend to pay for it. Since there was no Peace Tax Fund, Vinton reasoned, he would instead contribute the money to worthwhile projects and see that it was used for peaceful purposes. In 1987, the IRS served a levy on Friends Journal for $22,714.16, Vinton’s taxes for the period, plus interest and penalties. The IRS asked Friends Journal to withhold part of Vinton’s salary each month, but the Journal Board refused, writing that “We… are in support of Vinton Deming’s conscientious witness.”

In early February of this year, Friends Journal received a letter from the U.S. Department of Justice reminding us of the levy on Vinton’s salary and asking us to try to “resolve this matter short of litigation.” That is, to pay the original assessed amount plus interest and a possible 50 percent penalty on the total. We were given until Feb. 28 to respond.

If we were to continue refusing to honor the levy, an immediate court action would follow. The 1990 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Smith vs. Oregon, as Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and the American Friends Service Committee have learned, teaches us that there is no way we could win such a case in court, nor could our assets be protected from seizure. More troubling, this seizure could make others who are not involved in our decision, undergo unwelcome investigation. Finally, a court case offers IRS the opportunity to set a legal precedent requiring the payment of the 50 percent penalty (which a sympathetic judge excused in the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting case last year). We fear that the inevitable negative decision could establish that precedent and thereby restrict other individuals’ or groups’ religious freedom. And so, most reluctantly, the Friends Journal Board has agreed to negotiate with IRS and to pay the least amount IRS will accept ($31,300) as settlement of this claim.

Our painful recognition of failure is heavy upon us. We have to accept that our witness in its present form can no longer serve a useful purpose. We can hope Vinton’s action and our support will have brought the issue of tax refusal to the attention of others, thereby becoming a part of the tradition of citizen pressure that in the long run eliminates or diminishes social evils such as slavery and war.

Our protest is on record. What we will do now is support the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1991… which aims to reestablish the first amendment religious rights lost in the Smith vs. Oregon decision. We also urge support for the U.S. Peace Tax Fund Bill… which makes the same witness, but provides money to finance peace-enhancing projects. (Needless to say, if there had been a Peace Tax Fund in 1979, Vinton’s taxes would have been paid gladly, and there would have been no need for an IRS levy.) We ask all those who share our concerns to join in these legal approaches to the continuing effort to convince ourselves and others of the futility of armed conflict and the necessity of finding other means to resolve human disputes.

The immediate financial challenge to the Journal is a very real one. In a year in which we already face a substantial budget deficit, the payment of such a large lump sum adds an enormous burden. Vinton has engaged to repay the Journal through payroll deductions over time. We have been heartened as well, as word of our tax witness spreads, to receive gifts of support from our readers. One contributor writes: “I hope everyone at the Friends Journal can be made aware of Friends’ approval of [your] Board action. To help this happen, I encourage the Journal to go as public with the story as is consistent with respect for Vint’s privacy and the Journal’s limited resources. I am convinced that other Friends will wish to help financially when so informed.” For such words, and unexpected gifts, we are most grateful.

Readers wrote in with their feedback about the Journal’s decision, and some of their letters were printed in the July issue:

• Duane Magill wrote to “applaud” and “sympathize” with the Journal’s stand. “As a war tax resister myself for the past quarter of a century, I have had some brushes with the IRS myself and know what it is like. I also appreciate your giving publicity to the subject. I know that not many Quakers take this position, and giving the matter this extensive coverage just might encourage more to take this stand.”
• Yvonne Boeger wrote in on behalf of the Live Oak (Texas) Meeting to say that the meeting had recently “discussed the importance of war tax resistance as a means of witnessing to Friends’ long-standing opposition to all forms of war and violence” and that the Meeting was supportive of the Journal’s (and Deming’s) action. “We send the enclosed check as a token of our support and solidarity in Friends’ resistance to war. Thank you for the example you have set for us all.”
• Lillian and George Willoughby wrote to express gratitude for the Journal’s “courage in standing in support of Vint Deming.” They wrote: “Most important is the example of a Quaker religious employer providing support to staff who endeavor to live according to Friends’ teachings. The Journal has run considerable risk and incurred heavy expenses. We enclose our check as a demonstration of our support. We think that many other Friends will want to help carry the financial burden of this witness.”
• An editorial note in the letters column expressed “thanks to all those who have sent checks!” and a later editorial note (in the December issue) said that they had received “$8,000 from individuals and meetings, $7,000 from a Sufferings Fund of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting,” and almost $4,000 from Deming himself.

Mennonite war tax resister (and, according to his author bio, “itinerant prophet and spiritual retreat leader”) John K. Stoner wrote about the call he got from an IRS employee. Excerpts:

We talked for about ten minutes, as I explained why Janet and I had said “no” to paying the full amount of our income tax. The man could not understand why anyone would invite the collection pressures of the IRS upon themselves by withholding some taxes. But by the time the conversation was over, he was a little closer to understanding that this was, for us, a matter of faith and a question of the practice of our religion.

It was a Mark 13:9 kind of experience of being called before the authorities, “before governors and kings,” because of Jesus, as a testimony to them. By the sound of Mark 13, Jesus expected this kind of thing to happen regularly to his followers. Mark 13 is a good text to remember when everybody around you is quoting Romans 13.

The Christian Peacemaker Teams organization is promoting symbolic war tax refusal as a way to make a clear witness in the matter of war taxes. Taxes for Life is a plan to have taxpayers redirect to education an amount equivalent to 1 penny for every billion dollars in the military budget. For tax year 1991 this is $3.03, which can be mailed to Christian Peacemaker Teams… Listen to your conscience when you pay your taxes. Write a letter of witness to the IRS, with copies to Congress and your local newspaper. Redirect some taxes to education through CPT.

If the IRS calls, tell them that it makes you a little bit nervous to break their law and that you do not enjoy being harassed by the collectors of blood money. Go on to say that you are far more apprehensive, however, about breaking God’s law. Tell them that you hear God’s warning rising up from the bulldozed mass graves of Iraqi conscripts, fathers and husbands, and the nightmares of their children. Explain that you are really afraid to harden you heart to the cry of the victims and that you have decided you will not take their blood upon your hands.

When Randy Kehler was thrown in prison on contempt of court charges for refusing to vacate the home that had been seized by the IRS, he prepared a statement that he hoped to read. The court denied him permission to address it. The Journal printed the statement he’d hoped to have made, which is a good thing: it would be a shame if such an articulate statement was left to sit unread in a file folder somewhere.

My refusal to give up our home is not an act of contempt or defiance of your court order. I regard it as an act of conscience and also an act of citizenship. The two go hand in hand. The first obligation of responsible citizenship, I believe, is obedience to one’s conscience. Obedience to one’s government and to its laws is very important, but it must come second. Otherwise there is no check on immoral actions by governments, which are bound to occur in any society whenever power is abused.

I want to assure you, however, that I am not someone who treats the law lightly. Even when a particular law seems at first to have no clear purpose or justification, I try to give it — that is, give those who created and approved it — the benefit of the doubt. In an ideal sense, I see law as the codification of those rules and procedures by which the members or citizens of a community, be it local or global, have agreed to live. A decent respect for one’s community requires a decent respect for its laws. At their best, such laws express the conscience of the community, causing conscience and law to coincide.

The international treaties and agreements that my wife, Betsy, and I cited in the legal documents recently submitted to, and rejected by, this court are wonderful examples of the coincidence of law and conscience. These agreements, each one signed by our government, include the United Nations Charter, which outlaws war and the use of military force as methods of resolving conflicts among nations; the Hague Regulations and Geneva Conventions, which prohibit the use or threatened use of weapons that indiscriminately kill civilians and poison the environment; and the Nuremberg Principles, which forbid individual citizens from participating in or collaborating with clearly defined “crimes against humanity,” “war crimes,” and “crimes against peace,” even when refusal to participate or collaborate means disobeying the laws of one’s government.

These international accords — which, as you know, our Constitution requires us to regard as “the Supreme Law of the Land” — are at least as much affirmation of conscience, rooted in universal moral standards, as they are statements of law. Betsy and I regret that you chose to deny our request for a trial, which would have allowed us to argue the relevance of these international laws before a jury of our peers.

Even in the absence of such laws, however, I believe that citizens would still have an affirmative obligation to follow their conscience and refuse to engage in or support immoral acts by governments. It is not true, as is commonly thought, that if large numbers of people put conscience ahead of the law and decided for themselves which acts of government were immoral, civilized society would break down into violence and chaos — that is, greater violence and chaos than there is now. In fact, the opposite would likely occur. There would likely be greater compliance with those laws that are fundamentally just and reasonable — in other words, most laws — and there would be greater public pressure to abolish or reform those laws (and policies) that are unjust or unreasonable.

There would be exceptions for the worse, of course. In the name of conscience, certain individuals would, no doubt, do some terrible things and cause much injury and death, which happens now. On balance, however, the historical record is clear: from the Spanish Inquisition and the African slave trade, to Stalin’s purges, Hitler’s Holocaust, the genocide of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and our own devastation of Vietnam and Iraq, far more killing and suffering, has resulted from people following “legal” orders and obeying the law than from people refusing to do so in obedience to conscience.

My own refusal to kill (which led me to spend nearly two years in federal prison rather than cooperate with the Vietnam draft), Betsy’s and my refusal to pay federal taxes used for killing (which caused the IRS to seize our home), and now our refusal to turn over our home in lieu of taxes, are all acts of conscience. It has not been easy for us to deliberately violate the law in these instances, and in so doing incur the anxiety and disapproval of some of our friends and family, as well as the scorn and censure of many members of the community. We are painfully aware that even though we do pay our town and state taxes, and even though we have given away to the poor and to the victims of our war-making in other countries every cent that we have withheld from the federal government, nevertheless we are still regarded by some as irresponsible and not contributing our fair share.

These are times, however, when all of us are confronted with difficult choices. Betsy and I, and many others like us, feel we must choose between knowingly and willingly paying for war and killing, and openly and nonviolently breaking the law with respect to federal taxes. Our consciences compel us to choose the latter.

For me, the issue is larger than simply the taking of another human life, or even the instance of a particular war in which many lives are lost. I have increasingly come to see the larger issue as war itself. Whereas there has always been a moral imperative to end war and refrain from killing, today the imperative is much greater. Today the logic of peace, the logic of nonviolence, is also the logic of survival.

It is impossible to dis-invent today’s nuclear, chemical, biological, and so-called conventional weapons of mass destruction. Therefore, we have no alternative but to effectively abolish war. This is the one essential adaptation the human species must make — and, I firmly believe, can make — if life as we know it is to continue.

War today is the scourge of the planet. It is tragic enough that war is daily claiming the lives of people, maiming more, leaving orphans and widows, and destroying homes, schools, and hospitals — to say nothing of the irreplaceable treasures of human civilization destroyed in Baghdad last year and in Dubrovnik over the past several months. What makes war today even more tragic, more horrible, are the incalculable economic, social, and environmental costs that go along with it. Instead of using our human and material resources to produce food, medicine, housing, schools, and other desperately needed commodities, the world’s nations, led by our own, are annually spending trillions of dollars to purchase more and more weapons of even greater destructive capability. The hundreds of millions of children, women, and men whose lives are ravaged by poverty, hunger, and homelessness — around the world and here in the States — are as much victims of our addiction to war and militarism as are those who are hit directly by the bullets and bombs.

While the awful gap between the rich minority and the poor majority of the world’s people grows wider and wider, war’s assault on the earth — the earth that sustains us all — becomes more savage and less reversible with each new armed conflict. The severe and longterm ecological damage to the Persian Gulf region that resulted from only a few weeks of war last year is just the tip of the iceberg. The cumulative impact of the many smaller, less publicized wars elsewhere around the globe is no less severe and, ultimately, no less threatening to the well-being of people everywhere, including the United States. Furthermore, here at home, where ecological damage to our own environment is proceeding at a frightening pace, the single largest polluter by far, producing more toxic and radioactive waste than any other single entity, is the U.S. military.

I am not at all suggesting that our country bears sole responsibility for the global state of affairs. But we bear a good deal of it, and therefore any steps we take to move away from war will have great influence upon other countries around the world. Even before the collapse of the Soviet Union, we had the most powerful armed forces in the world, the most sophisticated weaponry, and by far the largest number of military bases outside our own borders. Since World War Ⅱ, we have used our military might to bomb, invade, or otherwise intervene in more countries around the world than any other nation. We were the first to develop the atomic bomb, and we are the only nation ever to use it. For years we have led the Soviets in atomic test explosions, and we ani continuing these tests even though Soviet testing has stopped. In addition, we have long been the world’s largest arms merchant, today supplying 40 percent of the entire overseas arms market.

We have been told that all of this is necessary for our security, but the opposite is true. This military colossus we have created has greatly undermined our security — by creating more enemies than it destroys, by wasting our precious resources and poisoning our environment, by degrading our democracy with “national security” secrecy, covert actions, and official lying, and by undercutting our highest Judeo-Christian values with the insidious doctrine of “might makes right.”

Betsy’s and my actions that have brought us to court are testament to our belief that there is another way for us to live in the world, and another way for us to resolve our conflicts with our fellow human beings. It is a way that is rooted in the best of our values: the values of generosity and justice, of human dignity and equality, of compassion and mutual respect. The seeds of this alternative way — the way of nonviolence that Dr. Martin Luther King tried to teach us — already exist within our society, and within each person. We have only to honor and nurture those seeds, individually and collectively. This is a prescription based not on wishful idealism, but on practical necessity. It is our only real hope for survival.

The transformation required cannot be accomplished without our accepting some measure of personal responsibility for the mess we are in. It would be futile to expect our government, or any other, to initiate it. In any event, we cannot afford to wait. The transformation must begin with us. Because we profess to be a self-governing people, it is all the more our responsibility.

We can exercise this responsibility by means of the choices each of us is called upon to make. For example, we can choose to speak out publicly against governmental practices and priorities that we know to be wrong. Many of us can also choose not to hand over to the federal government some part of our tax money — instead redistribute it to those in need, until such time as those in need become our government’s first priority. And each of us can choose to continue leading lives based on materialism, consumerism, and environmental exploitation, or we can find ways of living based on simplicity, sharing, and respect for the Earth. The choices we make as individuals will determine the choices we make as a nation.

This is, no doubt, a dangerous and ominous time to be alive in the world. Yet it is also a very exciting time to be alive. People all over the world, despite the opposition of their governments, are taking initiative to bring about momentous and long overdue changes. These winds of change are sweeping the planet, and they are not likely to stop at our borders.

If the people of Prague and Moscow can overthrow Soviet communism and bring about democracy and human rights; if the people of Soweto and Johannesburg can abolish South African apartheid and establish an egalitarian, multi-racial society; then, I feel sure, it is equally possible for us to dismantle U.S. militarism and replace it with attitudes and institutions of nonviolence.

It is my great hope, my silent prayer, that Betsy’s and my struggle to see that the fruits of our labor are used for nurturing and healing, rather than for killing and war, will somehow contribute to that process.

Following this, Christopher L. King had a piece promoting the Peace Tax Fund. He described it as the brainchild of David Bassett, who some twenty years before had come up with the idea of allowing taxpayers to perform “alternative service” money the way conscientiously objecting draftees could with their labor. King wrote that he was surprised to find little awareness of the bill in Quaker circles and described some of the work that he and his comrades were doing for the bill.

Those of us who meet each month and a quiet group of supporters in the surrounding communities believe in our consciences that war and militarism are wrong. We don’t believe they should be the major tools of our foreign policy. We sympathize with citizens like Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner of Colrain, Massachusetts, who have chosen to pay no taxes because they are pacifists.

We empathize with those brave souls who choose alternative lifestyles so they can keep their income below taxable levels. It often means their children must learn to sacrifice at an early age. It means stepping out of the mainstream culture.

Most of us don’t want to change our lifestyles radically or go to jail for our beliefs. Some might argue that if we are true to our faith, we have no other choice. On the other hand, there is a need to resist the fundamental tyranny that requires that we must become rebels if we wish to stand firmly for peace.

King’s article was pretty vague on the mechanics of what the Peace Tax Fund bill would actually accomplish, and it was written as if there were no reason why a conscientious objector to paying to war might not find it a satisfactory solution.

The July issue included a brief review of the video Paying for Peace: War Tax Resistance in the United States, which was produced by Carol Coney. Excerpt:

Among those interviewed are Brian Willson, a war tax resister and Vietnam veteran who in 1987 was run over by a train while blocking munitions shipments at the Concord naval weapons plant in California. Also interviewed is Maurice McCrackin, a minister who was sentenced to jail for war tax resistance in the early 1950s; Ernest and Marion Bromley, who have lived under the taxable income level to avoid paying taxes for military purposes; and Juanita Nelson, an early civil rights organizer who was the first woman to spend a night in jail for war tax resistance.

The August issue included an op-ed from Allan Kohrman suggesting Quakers ought to be more patriotic, perhaps singing “God Bless America” during their Sunday meetings, and in particular should rethink their permissive attitude toward civil disobedience and war tax resistance. “Many Friends seem to define civil disobedience as breaking any law they feel is morally wrong. Some will not pay war taxes, testifying that God has called them to resist. I would argue that paying taxes is a basic responsibility of citizenship, a function of my almost mystical relationship to my country. God calls me to pay my taxes much as God calls others to resist them.” That’s what “an almost mystical relationship to my country” will get you, I guess.

Another note in that issue concerned two Quakers in Germany — Christa & Klausmart Voigt — who had been prosecuted for war tax resistance. “About 40 Friends from all over Germany attended the hearing, which was overseen by five judges.” Klausmart had “placed his money in an account for a peace tax initiative,” and at press time they were still awaiting the court’s decision.

There was another note about the Tax Resisters’ Penalty Fund in the October issue, which described it this way: “When a request for assistance comes in, the committee that oversees the fund takes it under consideration, then notifies people who have agreed to participate of the amount each would need to contribute to cover the tax resister’s penalty and interest debt. Contributions are not used to cover the tax liability itself. The fund is administered in cooperation with the North Manchester (Ind.) Fellowship of Reconciliation.”

War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in 1993

By 1993 the coverage of American Quaker war tax resistance in the Friends Journal makes it seem pretty weak — not a lot of activity at all, and what there is of it is half-hearted symbolic measures or pathetic attempts to get Congress to pass a “Peace Tax Fund” scheme. There was almost more news about war tax resistance in Canada than in the United States.

The March issue made note of another lobby day for the Peace Tax Fund bill, and of a new “EZ Peace Form” that the “Alternative Revenue Service” was encouraging tax filers to fill out:

The Peace Form has a similar format as IRS forms, with a section for figuring one’s tax share, a section that shows the percentages going to various government programs, and a section in which one can indicate where to redirect one’s tax contribution. Forms are to be returned to the Alternative Revenue Service so it can announce the number it receives and the amount of taxes redirected from financing war to providing for human needs.

Another note told readers how they could obtain transcripts of the Congressional hearing on the Peace Tax Fund bill, and noted: “The hearing was attended by several hundred Friends, Mennonites, Brethren, peace activists, and pacifists of all faiths.… The hearing received more than 2,300 letters of written testimony from people across the country, from which a selection is published in the transcript. Some of the voices are from Friends Journal, Friends United Meeting, the American Friends Service Committee, a number of yearly meetings, and many other denominations and organizations.”

A letter from John K. Stoner of the “New Call to Peacemaking” in the April issue asserted that “Some day in the future the true heroes of our time will be named. They will be the people who refused to pay war taxes, who vigiled, prayed, and demonstrated in front of weapons plants, who resisted in whatever way they could the insidious, relentless pressure to conform to the mentality of deterrence, the idolatry of redemptive violence, the rule of the gun, and the economy of death.”

An article in that issue mentioned that the Congressional hearing concerning the Peace Tax Fund bill was the product of a great deal of work: “[T]o arrange for that hearing,” the article said, “FCNL lobbyists worked with the Peace Tax Fund Campaign for eight years!”

The May issue included two articles on war tax resistance. One by Robin Harper that I mentioned in an earlier Picket Line, and a second: “What Do We Owe Caesar?” by Marguerite Clark. It gave a sort of fresh, starting-from-scratch overview of the war tax issue and at how Friends had tried to meet it, but was overwhelmingly pessimistic, asserting that there’s no satisfying way to practice war tax resistance because the government has the power to inevitably get its hands on the money eventually (Clark used the case of the Friends Journal capitulating and paying Vinton Deming’s taxes as a case in point). She ended her piece by hoping Quakers would “take a stand” by supporting the Religious Freedom Restoration Act as a hopeful first step in legalizing conscientious objection to military taxation (that Act eventually passed but has so far been of no help at all in legalizing such conscientious objection).

A letter from Edwin A. Vail in response to Harper’s article trotted out the familiar argument that it’s wrong to withhold your taxes from the government on the grounds that the government might spend the money improperly for the same reason that it’s wrong to refuse to repay a debt because you think the person you owe money to might spend the money unwisely.

The October issue brought news of a new group, calling itself “The Peace Taxpayers” — 

• The Peace Taxpayers are available as counselors for people wishing to experience “the joys of peace taxpaying.” The organization works to change existing U.S. tax codes which force all income taxpayers to be supporters of war and preparations for war. The counselors can help with questions about Internal Revenue Service regulations, how to redirect war taxes, and how to reduce taxable income.…
• The Peace Taxpayers organization is accepting submissions for a new book, The Joy of Peace Taxpaying. They are looking for writings of any style and length that describe paths taken and personal experiences of those who have acted on their opposition to paying for war.…

Michael Fogler and Ed Pearson were given as contact persons for the group. “The Peace Taxpayers” was still somewhat active as late as 2000, and I’ve seen references to it dating back as far as 1990.

International news

An obituary notice for Albert E. Moorman in the January issue mentioned that “[i]n 1968 he and his wife immigrated to Canada to free themselves from paying taxes to the United States government, whose foreign policy they had long been at odds with.”

A note in that issue also asserted that “It is possible to divert one’s military taxes to selected charitable donations in Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia, Canada. Under recent Ontario law, donations to Conrad Grebel College, University of Waterloo Foundation for Peace Studies, qualify as ‘gifts to the crown.’ ” However, a letter-to-the-editor in the December issue threw some cold water on that:

A news item in your April issue gives the impression that directing military taxes to peace in Canada is possible and simple, by making donations to the Crown (all levels of government). We wish it were so, but there is no provision in the Income Tax Act so far to exempt us from paying a proportion of our taxes to the military, as in the States.

We have been advocating making donations to charitable organizations, political parties, and to the Crown to reduce all taxes, including military taxes, but one would have to donate very large amounts to eliminate taxes altogether. Most of us probably would not want to do so, as we benefit from medicare, pensions, social assistance, etc., all paid for with our taxes.

Ray Funk’s Private Member’s Bill was scheduled to be debated in the House of Commons on June 16, but the government recessed the House on the 16^th, and we are now headed for an election on October 25. Jean Chretian [sic.], the leader of the main opposition party, has suggested to us that we might be able to direct our war taxes to the Canadian Institute for International Peace and Security, which he intends to reestablish, if elected. So we are hopeful that, in the next Parliament, some progress will be made.

Edith Adamson
Conscience Canada, Inc.

Canadian war tax resister Jerilynn Prior, who had been pursuing a long and fruitless court battle to try to get conscientious objection to military taxation recognized as a right under the new Canadian Constitution, wrote a book about her stand — I Feel the Winds of God Today — that earned a brief review in the June issue. “The author describes the influences in her life that led her to become a war tax resister… she talks about the difficulties in the [legal] process and her disappointment at not receiving a hearing at court. Interwoven with this is an account of her conscientious leadings regarding her career in medicine and her vocation as a mother. She also refers to the troubles of Canadian Yearly Meeting in following requests of employees who with to become war tax resisters.”

The London Yearly Meeting, according to the July issue, was spurred to “renewed action,” as the Journal called it, “in the form of a letter writing campaign, to express objection to paying taxes for military purposes. A monthly letter to the Inland Revenue, expressing London Yearly Meeting’s position, is now being supported by an effort to reach the members of Parliament. However, help is needed. Friends are asked to use these monthly letters, and their law-quoting responses, to show the dilemma which arises when an employer with 300 years’ heritage of peace witness is required to collect and hand over money which pays, in part, for war and war preparations.”

War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in 1994

American Quaker war tax resistance reemerged in the Friends Journal in 1994, with some real live resisters telling their stories and sharing the processes by which they had developed their methods of resistance.

The February issue had several mentions of war tax resistance. Editor Vinton Deming’s lead editorial concerned his annual confrontation of the “agonizing question” of what to do at tax-filing time. Excerpt:

For many years I sought ways to protest. I started by submitting a letter with my 1040 objecting to the large sums going to the Pentagon and the neglect of other needed programs. No one responded. At other times I requested a refund so I might send a sum to a human service program not being adequately funded. Nice idea, I thought, but IRS didn’t think so. One year they told me the request was “frivolous,” and they tried to penalize me for asking. My lawyer got them to drop the matter. Then about 15 years ago I stopped filing a tax return altogether, choosing instead to write a letter to the president explaining why I was not willing as a Friend to pay for things like B-1 bombers, cruise missiles, or Star Wars.

The latter approach clearly got the attention of IRS officials. Suddenly I was “playing in the big leagues.” The government took me to court on two occasions and threatened to do the same to my present employer unless my back taxes, interest, and penalties were paid at once [see ♇ 9 August 2013]. Reluctantly, and after much soul searching, the Journal agreed to pay. I released them to do so, being convinced we had resisted as long as we could and had explored all legal means. Friends rallied to support us with financial gifts to help pay the large debt. In December 1993 I made my last monthly payment to the Journal.

I continue to struggle with IRS on this matter, which dates back to my tax resistance of the 1980s. The government disagreed with our math for what we believed was actually owed in back taxes. My lawyer is maneuvering to try to prevent IRS from seizing my Individual Retirement Account, an argument to be decided by a judge later this year.

In more recent tax years I have filed and paid, trying to claim as many exemptions as possible and to limit the government’s take. I have lobbied for the Peace Tax Fund Bill and supported others who are resisting.

David Shen also wrote of his war tax resistance in that issue. Excerpts:

For 12 years, I have withheld a portion of my income tax from IRS. I refuse to give money to the military to kill people. There is too much need around us. For the last three years, I have given this portion to My Brothers’ House, a homeless shelter my Quaker meeting supports in the inner city of Philadelphia. Each year at tax time, I sigh deeply. I know IRS may punish me. And I know I stand on the side of life.

For these 12 years, IRS and I have been corresponding politely. They send me notices; I write back. Since I received notices of intent to levy and since they have not levied, I assume I have been lost in their millions of files. I was surprised, then, when my college employer received the levy on my salary.

My first talks with IRS, lawyers, and F/friends left me feeling depressed and helpless. IRS would get what they thought was theirs.

Then God intervened. Inadvertently, my lawyer angered me. In my anger, I took a position of reducing my wages to a level IRS could not levy. (By law IRS must leave me a wage to live on.) I had not considered it before, since doing so would cost me $2,200 — more than the levy’s $1,200.

I think Shen is being too modest here in giving God the credit for a bold decision that came direct from Shen.

I approached the college dean, my superior. “Reduce my wages,” I said, “so IRS cannot satisfy its levy.” But the dean shocked me. Her superior, the vice president, would not allow me to reduce my wages. I had to quit or pay the levy.

That sounds very familiar. When I first started resisting, I went in to the human resources department of my employer to ask if reducing my salary below the tax line was an option. They told me it was out of the question. My response was to resign and become an independent contractor. Shen took a different tack:

After a conversation with one of my students, I decided to continue teaching and pay the levy. I would, however, also continue learning about love and Truth. Could I reach administrators, I wondered, if I used Gandhi’s principle of selfsuffering? I would direct suffering to me, and not to the college, by teaching at reduced income rather than quitting and leaving the college with 80 angry students.

I met with the administrator who wrote my paycheck, the department chair, the dean again, and then the vice-president. Three respected my position (the vicepresident didn’t reveal his stand). The payroll administrator blurted out, “Isn’t there a legal way you can do this (pay income tax without paying the military)?”

When I met with the president of the college, six weeks had passed and the levy was almost fully paid. He was busy. He startled me by agreeing with my right to take my position, and he would seek how I could do so at the college. Two weeks later, he informed me he could not find a legal way to accommodate me.

I, though, was thrilled. In our two conversations, the president and I connected. We talked about my tax situation for 20 minutes and unexpectedly talked about his and my family for 90 minutes. He was late for one of his appointments. As I waved goodbye, he asked, “Stop in for coffee again, will you?”

What did I learn? I am poorer by $1,200, but I am richer in intangible ways. I feel in the flow of God’s will for me and feel connected to people — F/friends who support me and opponents who respect me. I am invigorated and happy

It must be comforting to feel that “God’s will” is responsible for all the difficult and fuzzy decisions you make. Whether you zig or you zag, whether things turn out well or ill, God’s in charge and if you’re willing to give Him all the credit, He’ll be glad to take all the blame.

The same issue published part of an interview that Susan Van Haitsma conducted with Paula Rogge the previous year. Excerpts:

What were the motivating factors in your decision to become a tax resister?

Deciding to refuse to pay taxes for war was a slow, gradual process for me… As I grew older and attended Illinois Yearly Meeting, I heard more about tax resistance. I met two men who had served time in prison for refusing to pay war taxes or resisting cooperation with the Internal Revenue Service. I saw them as very committed people with a lot of integrity, and I could see that the yearly meeting supported them. So, at some level I felt that tax resistance was the logical extension of my pacifist views, and I knew there was a community of support for tax resistance among the Friends and the wider peace community as well.…

How did you go about your tax resistance?

That first year, I think I owed one dollar. I refused to pay the dollar and sent a letter to the IRS explaining my position. The next year, I increased the number of withholding allowances on my W-4 form so that I owed the IRS at the end of the year instead of vice-versa. I began by refusing to pay 40–50 percent of my federal tax money because at the time, that was the approximate percentage being used to fund current and past wars. Then, over time, I realized that of the 50–60 percent I was paying, 40–50 percent was still being used for military purposes, so I stopped paying the whole kit and caboodle. I stopped paying all taxes because I had no control whatsoever over how the money was being spent. In the last several years I’ve also stopped paying social security taxes because the government borrows from those funds to help cover the deficit, indirectly financing the defense system. So, it’s been a gradual process of taking my tax resistance further and further. I’ve always filed, and the IRS and I have always agreed about how much I’ve owed (now over $60,000 including penalties and interest). At this point, I don’t feel led to stop filing. For myself, I feel better being open about it, but I realize many tax resisters don’t file, and I respect their reasons for going that route.

Have you redirected your tax money?

The first couple of years that I did tax resistance, I put the money aside in a bank account, assuming it would be seized. It wasn’t seized right away, however, and I’m afraid the money was spent without having been donated as it should have. But I learned, and since then I’ve made sure the amount of money owed in taxes and social security is donated every year to charitable groups. I’ve had a lot of fun giving this money away. Sometimes when I have sent the contribution, I have included a note explaining that the donation represents refused war taxes, and I have received supportive notes in return. It’s a very empowering feeling to know that my money is doing some good.

Have there been special ways in which you would say your life has been affected positively by your practice of tax resistance?

When I finished my residency, I worked in a migrant clinic for two years in the Rio Grande Valley in Harlingen, Texas: a very conservative community. The second year I was there, I wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper explaining that I was a war tax resister and why. The newspaper editor phoned me to make sure I really wanted the letter printed! I said yes, and they did print it. I was afraid of the response I might get from the community, but I felt it was important to be public about my stance. After the letter was printed, the other doctors in Harlingen actually became much friendlier and began to take a certain interest in me. I don’t think any of them agreed with the tax resistance, but they seemed to respect my position. Several nurses and a nuclear medicine technician I hadn’t known before introduced themselves and expressed their support of my war tax resistance. I didn’t get any negative reactions. In 1987, I began a medical family practice in Austin, Texas, along with another doctor. The first year into the practice, the IRS sent notice that my wages would be garnisheed. I asked that my salary be lowered to $100 per week, as that is the amount exempt from levy. In order to supplement this reduced income, I began to work moonlighting jobs in various agencies: the city Health Department, Planned Parenthood, and the State Commission for the Blind, for example. I had to find new moonlighting jobs every two years or so because that was about the length of time it usually took the IRS to catch up and begin attaching wages again. Something good happened as a result of this. I’ve had to explain to all potential employers that at some point the IRS would begin to levy my wages and when that happened, I would no longer be able to work for them. When I explained this to the Texas Commission for the Blind during my interview, for example, they were quite taken aback, and I thought I probably wouldn’t get the job. But, a few weeks later, they did hire me! The woman who hired me said she understood why I was doing tax resistance and that she agreed with my convictions. I came to feel a real sense of support and community there.

In March of 1990, the IRS seized your automobile. Could you describe what happened?

Well, some time before the car was seized, an IRS agent, accompanied by a law officer, came to our clinic to pay me a visit. I could tell they were nervous and even a bit hostile. But as we sat and talked, and I explained why I simply could not pay for war, I could see them both soften a little. Toward the end of the interview, the officer began asking questions about our practice and commented that it was unusual for us to be located in such a poor neighborhood. As they were leaving, I complemented the officer on his cowboy boots — he had on some kind of exotic boots — and I think he was tickled pink that I had noticed them. He told me where he had gotten them. It was kind of a humorous exchange and I felt very good about that. We had related as people. I figured that since my wages had become uncollectible and I had no bank account, eventually my car would be seized. But even so, the morning it happened, it came as a bit of a shock. My IRS agent came to the bouse and, poor woman, she was just shivering in her shoes, she looked so nervous. She placed a sticker on the car and then asked if she could use my phone to call the tow truck! I decided that they were going to tow it one way or another, so I invited her in to use the phone. I had a sick patient in the emergency room at the time, so I took a taxi to the hospital right away. Having a patient to worry about took my mind off the car long enough to ease my worry about the situation. Then friends came forward and loaned me their cars without my having to ask. A month following the seizure, the car was auctioned. About 20–30 Quakers and other friends came and protested the auction, asking potential buyers not to bid on the car. At least one potential buyer was convinced to refrain from bidding, but a used car dealer did, in the end, buy the car. A week following the auction, a doctor I had once worked with phoned and said that he wanted to buy the car back from the car dealer and donate it anonymously to our practice. That was such a wonderful surprise. I was very moved because I respected him very much as a doctor. I talked the offer over with friends. Though I didn’t want the money going, even indirectly, to the IRS, I did want this doctor to have an opportunity to support the whole cause of war tax resistance, and this was his way of contributing. I decided to accept the car. It came back with new tires, looking much cleaner than it had before it was seized! A friend of the doctor had also done a tune-up on it — and it was great. I think the best part of this story is that when I tell it, people chuckle. You see, it’s such a good example of how limited the power of the IRS is in the face of creative resistance. It’s also an example of how our needs are often met in unexpected ways when we take a stand for peace. I think these three experiences in particular — the return of my car, receiving the job at the Commission for the Blind, and the reaction to the letter in Harlingen paper — were all occasions when I felt that speaking out for truth actually opened doors and tore down barriers between other people and me. When I was willing to take a stand for what I felt was right, I discovered a community of support I hadn’t realized existed.

Perry Treadwell also wrote about his war tax resistance in that issue. Excerpts:

Today I received another one of those white envelopes from the Internal Revenue Service — the ones that tell me I failed to pay $35 in 1986 or $106 in 1988 and now I owe a lot more in penalties and interest. I file them away with the other ones from last year and the year before.

But this time their arrival reminded me of an anniversary of sorts. It has been 20 years since I first refused to pay that portion of my federal income taxes which, I believed, went to war. I refused to pay for people to kill other people.

A year later I resigned my tenured university position [see ♇ 22 July 2013] and drastically simplified my lifestyle so the fruits of my labors would not be used for war.

I still get that little twist in the stomach when those IRS letters come. Sometimes the IRS actually raids a bank account or Individual Retirement Account. However, I know that Friends are there should I ever need their support in not cooperating with a government whose only answer to conflict is violence. I have been able to simplify my life to a point where I am below the taxable level. Friends’ support has helped.

The richness of my life is proportional to my friendships. That is what I have learned in 20 years, and that is what I pass on to others.

The May issue had an obituary notice for Jane Palmer which noted that she “chose to live in accordance with the Quaker peace testimony and purposefully limited her income to avoid paying taxes that supported war efforts,” and one for Mildred Teusler Ringwalt which mentioned “her refusal to pay the portion of her income taxes she believed supported such [war] efforts.”

One of the events at the Friends General Conference Gathering in July — the “Henry J. Cadbury Event, sponsored by Friends Journal” — was “an original production in story and song about the war tax witness of Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner from Colrain, Massachusetts. The stage performance won a favorable review from those who crowded the auditorium (despite the heat and lack of air conditioning!). A video of the show was made and will be available at a later date.”

At the Illinois Yearly Meeting in July (according to a Journal article the following February), “Sebrina Tingley explained not just the nuts and bolts of war tax resistance but also the spiritual call to do so” and “Bill Ramsey (American Friends Service Committee) told of his personal experiences involving war tax resistance.”

The lead editorial of the September issue was all about the Peace Tax Fund Bill and an effort to get 10,000 people to write letters to Congress supporting it. “The Peace Tax Fund Bill,” according to one supporter’s letter, “when it becomes law, will give us our religious liberty. We’ll be able to pay our taxes in good conscience since we’ll be allowed to pay for peaceful projects rather than for war.”

Two letters-to-the-editor in the December issue reacted to that project: one, by Marge Schier, thanking the Journal for aiding the cause — “We’re even more sure now that we can do it!” — and the other, by Elizabeth Campuzano, giving the gist of the letter she had sent: “I told them that I voluntarily live below the federal poverty limit in order to avoid paying income taxes for war. I told them that if this bill passes, I will raise my income in order to pay for education, road and bridge repairs, anti-monopoly enforcement, etc.” She added: “I think this is one of the greatest things FJ has ever done!”

International news

A report about the previous year’s Canadian Yearly Meeting in the February issue mentioned that “[t]he ad hoc committee on war tax concerns has found a method which potentially will allow Canadian Yearly Meeting to redirect the military portion of employees’ income tax remittances to the federal government’s Debt Service and Reduction Fund. This is not an entirely satisfactory solution, but perhaps a first step.”

1994’s Canadian Yearly Meeting (according to a story in the March 1995 issue) “reached joyful unity in a decision as an employer to stop remitting to Revenue Canada the military portion of taxes for those employees who request it.”

This decision follows several years of study, prayerful consideration, and the attempt during early 1994 for use of legal means of expressing our conscientious objection to paying for the military. The remittance will instead be paid into Conscience Canada, with consideration given to establishing in the future a specific trust fund.

The Fifth International Conference on War Tax Resistance and Peace Tax Campaigns was held in Spain in September and was covered in the Journal the following June in a report by Steve Gulick. Excerpt:

About 70 activists from all over Europe and a number of other parts of the world gathered in Hondarribia, Spain, September 16–18, 1994, to charge our batteries, to compare conditions in our various countries, to get to know each other, and to carry on business. It was inspiring to meet, get to know, and work with war tax resisters and peace campaigners from all over Europe and from the United States, Canada, Peru, Iraq, and Palestine. The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee raised money to make it possible for the Palestinian, Elias Rishmawi from Beit Sahour, West Bank, to attend. The Iraqi and the Peruvian attenders are currently living in Europe. One problem with the gathering — similar to the War Resisters International gathering that I attended in 1979 — was the difficulty of getting a diverse attendance. Folks from India were unable to attend, for example, in part because of the distance.

I attended as a delegate from the War Tax Concerns Support Committee of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. Other attenders from the United States were David Bassett and Marian Franz (National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund), Susan Quinlan and Larry Rosenwald (National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee), Cynthia Johnson (Women Strike for Peace), and Gerri Michalska (Pax Christi) — which gave some of us from the U.S. movement the opportunity to get to know each other.

The conference issued a number of public documents — the most important being the bylaw of a new non-governmental organization which will have consultative powers with both the UN and the European parliament: Conscience and Peace Tax International. The role/goal of the organization will be to espouse the cause of those who take stands of conscience in relation to military expenditures — and also military service and issues of conscience and civil and human rights more generally.

A report back from the November Germany Yearly Meeting mentioned war tax resistance matter-of-factly:

In our commitments to projects such as “alternatives to violence,” civilian peace service, war tax refusal, and in our decision to give financial support to the setting up of a Quaker Center in Moscow, Russia, we express that we not only ask ourselves “how do we see God?” but also “how do we do God?”…

War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in 1996

There was next to nothing in the Friends Journal in 1996 about war tax resistance, and what there was largely concerned the ongoing fools’ errand of trying to enact a “Peace Tax Fund” law.

In the March issue, the Journal announced that the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund’s “10,000 letters” project had met its goal earlier that year of “sending 10,000 letters to… congressional representatives in support of the Peace Tax Fund Bill.” According to the note:

The National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund… has over 5,000 members, including 50 national religious and peace organizations. Nearly one-third of every federal income tax dollar is spent for military purposes. An estimated 10 to 20 thousand taxpayers violate tax law each year, rather than violate their conscience. Many more taxpayers violate the dictates of their conscience rather than face stiff penalties and fines from the IRS. The Peace Tax Fund Bill amends the Internal Revenue Code so that a taxpayer, conscientiously opposed to participation in the military, can pay taxes in full and have the part of those taxes equal to the current military portion of the federal budget paid into a government trust fund for nonmilitary purposes.

The July issue noted that the Campaign had launched a web site, and was also “collecting information regarding war tax resistance for distribution to the.public and members of Congress. The organization is interested in stories about the impact of war tax resistance on individuals’ lives, reasons for becoming a war tax resister, experiences with the IRS, or any other aspect of war tax resistance.”

The November issue noted the upcoming “international conference on peace tax campaigns and war tax resistance.”

And that, sad to say, is that.

War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in 1997

There was a resurgence of war tax resistance news in the Friends Journal in 1997, including an interesting series of articles on the voluntary simplicity / low income lifestyle as a tax resistance tactic, and the beginning chapters of the tale of Quaker war tax resister Priscilla Adams.

A note in the March issue plugged the “Conscience and Military Tax Campaign Escrow Account”:

Established in 1980 by the Nonviolent Action Community of Cascadia, the account allows war tax resisters to set aside refused military taxes in a secure fund. Deposits may be retrieved at any time (to replace assets seized by the IRS, for example), and interest from the account is used to promote war tax resistance and support peace and social justice activism. Depositors’ funds are reinvested in socially responsible institutions assisting low-income communities and minorities. The CMTC Escrow Account is the largest and most geographically diverse war tax redirection fund in the United States.

War tax resistance is an act of civil disobedience, and resisters potentially face fines, levies, and seizure of assets. However, the escrow account itself is a trust fund, and as such is confidential and entirely legal. Depositor records are not available to the IRS, and individual deposits are considered to be anonymous portions of a larger fund invested in fully insured institutions. Participants receive records of their transactions, annual statements, and a free subscription to NACC’s quarterly war tax resistance magazine.

(I wouldn’t rely on any of that as solid legal advice. My understanding is that the IRS sometimes treats “warehouse banks” like these as illegal operations that they can seize wholesale under the theory that they’re being operated for money laundering or tax evasion purposes.)

In a letter in the May issue, William Kriebel called out Quakers on their careless or politically-correct use of of language; in particular he claimed: “There are no ‘war taxes.’ All income tax money goes into the treasury without earmarking for the military. Taxation is a legitimate power of any government. Our points of protest really are the decisions (budget-making, appropriation) to use money out of the common fund for military purposes.”

An article on the Quaker Council for European Affairs in the same issue noted in passing that “conscientious objection to war taxes” was one of the “studies for publication” that the organization had produced. Another article in that issue noted that the National Association of Evangelicals had endorsed the Peace Tax Fund bill:

“At first this was just a lonely struggle for the peace churches,” said Marian Franz, director of the campaign, “then we got the support of the mainline churches, which represent over 12 million people. Now we have support from more conservative religious organizations, who, until recently, had seemed to be unlikely allies.” Marian attributes the recently attained, broad base of support to a change in tactics from an issue of conscientious objection to an issue of religious liberties. Marian explained that “having this broad base of support means that members of Congress, even conservative members, take the issue more seriously.”

On 4 May, there was a benefit premiere showing of An Act of Conscience, a documentary on the Kehler/Corner house seizure and subsequent occupation. There was some tangential Quaker involvement in the benefit (it was sponsored by several organizations, including a regional AFSC office, and some Massachusetts Quakers took part in the occupation), and the benefit screening was covered in a note in the August issue.

In the lead editorial in the June issue, editor Vinton Deming paid tribute to Eleanor Webb:

Eleanor Webb, who died March 5, was clerk of the Journal board when I was appointed editor-manager in 1981.… It was Eleanor… who stood firmly in support of staff who resisted paying the military portion of their federal taxes.

One of the feature articles in the July issue was written by David R. Bassett and told his story as “The Founder of the Peace Tax Fund Movement.” Excerpts:

This year marks the 25th year since the introduction of the Peace Tax Fund Bill in the U.S. Congress. I have been involved in the initiation of this legislation, a laborer in the centuries-long effort to establish on earth the type of peaceful world envisioned by Jesus and George Fox. I firmly believe that, on some significant day in the future, some nation will for the first time pass a Peace Tax Fund Bill, thereby establishing legal recognition of the right of conscientious objection to the payment of military taxes. Once this is accomplished, other nations will follow suit. I consider this goal as one of the crucial and route-determining “trail-signs” on the path to that time and place where the world will realize that ahimsa (soulforce) is the preferred way to resolve conflict and to govern communities, and where conscientious objection to war and other forms of violence will be considered the norm.

[My] orientation as a conscientious objector to war and of preventing preventable suffering impelled Miyoko and me, beginning in 1967–68, to wrestle with the fact that each year we were paying (through our federal taxes) to support the Viemam War and the military system generally. In fact, some 50 percent of those tax moneys went to support U.S. military systems! One of my most graphic memories of that time was, while working many nights at Queens Hospital in Honolulu, hearing U.S. Air Force jet tankers, fully laden with jet fuel, flying over the heavily populated part of Honolulu on their way to Indochina.

Conscientious objection to payment of military taxes

In 1968, with the Vietnam War continuing, we moved to Ann Arbor to work at the University of Michigan. We became members of the Ann Arbor Meeting and found there a number of people who were actively grappling with the issue of whether to continue to pay the military portion of federal taxes for a war that we opposed. I came to realize that any nation’s military programs are made possible the, monetary resources that, in the analysis, are extracted from the nation’s citizens by taxation. It also became clear to me that one who was conscientiously opposed to military systems must not allow his or her funds to be used for this purpose. Surveying the pervasive role of our military system not only in our foreign policies, but in its effects on our economy, our environment, and on the nation’s culture and spirit, I carne to feel that this issue was central to our times. Conscientious objection to payment of military taxes is as important to be established as was the ending of slavery and of apartheid and the establishment of women’s right to vote. At the same time, I held then, and still hold, the view that the federal government is capable of carrying out many beneficial and constructive programs and that I am willing, indeed obligated, to pay my full share of taxes to support those programs.

I came to know that it would not be enough simply to focus on reductions in military spending by influencing legislators and electing new ones (though this was obviously necessary). The challenge was to extend the right of conscientious objection to war to include not only one’s physical body, but also one’s economic resources. I knew further that there had been repeated resistance in the U.S. courts to such change and concluded that, while civil disobedience in this area (i.e., war tax resistance) would continue to be essential, the principal focus of attention should be to change the tax laws.

During the year 1969–1970, there was for me a struggle with my conscience, not in regard to what I believe on this issue but whether to take some action and what that action should be. Should I live below a taxable income level? move to Canada? engage in war tax resistance? take our civil disobedience actions into the judicial system? or attempt to change the federal tax laws? Miyoko and I knew that to embark on any of these actions would require great amounts of time and energy; that each course would require some changes and risks, not all of which we could anticipate at the outset; and that none were assured of “success.” I knew that to commit the time necessary to move this issue forward might conflict with my hopes of making progress in academic medicine and in research into the causes of atherosclerosis. We gradually came to the view that it seemed wisest to try to resist paying the military portion of our taxes and to begin to take steps to bring about legislative change.

It was the quiet voice of conscience that kept nagging me almost every day, as I found one or another reason not to take some action. Finally, in the later fall of 1970, I phoned Professor Joseph Sax at the University of Michigan Law School and outlined to him the basic idea: the need to change the federal tax laws so as to have Congress grant legal recognition to the right of conscientious objection to the payment of military taxes, while enabling the taxpayer to pay the full amount of his or her tax with assurance that those tax monies would not be used for military expenditures. Professor Sax sketched out how this might be accomplished. Over a period of eight to nine months, with the assistance of Michael Hall, we began the process of drafting what became the World Peace Tax Fund Bill.

Other Ann Arbor Friends, Joe and Fran Eliot and Bob and Margaret Blood, had been considering drafting a bill. A brief written for them by Thomas Towe (a Quaker law student) proved a helpful resource. It was not hard to draw together a working committee of seven or eight people during the spring and summer of 1971 to work on this legislation and to take the initial steps in deciding how to bring the bill to Congress, how to publicize it, and how to raise funds. We were encouraged when Ann Arbor’s Interfaith Council for Peace decided to support the legislative effort and appointed two very effective members to meet with us on a regular basis.

The World Peace Tax Fund Bill was first introduced in the U.S. Congress on April 15, 1972, with Representative Ronald V. Dellums as the lead sponsor, with nine other cosponsors. The Peace Tax Fund office moved from Ann Arbor to the Florida Avenue Meetinghouse in Washington, D.C., in May, 1975. The bill was first introduced in the Senate in 1977, with Senator Mark Hatfield as its sponsor. In 1985 the bill was renamed the U.S. Peace Tax Fund Bill. A dedicated staff, led for the past 14 years by Marian Franz, has coordinated the lobbying effort. The orientation and the gifts that she brings to her work are evident in her book, Questions That Refuse To Go Away.

A sidebar noted resources available from the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund, and also made note of the international conferences at which similar plans proposed in other countries are discussed.

Another sidebar gave a version of the ever-popular War Resisters League “pie chart” of federal spending, showing in particular how it looks when social insurance trust fund spending is removed.

The same issue also contains Clare Hanrahan’s article “Wholesome Poverty: A Revolutionary Adventure.” Unfortunately, in the archived PDF, some of the opening paragraph is obscured by an insert card. The article appears to begin with Hanrahan saying that she initially adopted a lower-income simple-living lifestyle in order to resist war taxes, but then came to believe that frugality and thrift and anti-consumerism and simplicity had a larger role to play in the pursuit of “a just and sustainable global community.” It continues:

When I must work for wages, I do so as an independent contractor so that I can maintain control over tax withholdings. I redirect a fair percentage of cash wages and many hours of volunteer time to support life-affirming projects at home and abroad. Self-employment suits my temperament and has enabled me to develop skills and to pursue interests I may never have had the time for in a conventional career. I’ve tried to be resilient and open to any honest labor. If I’m asked what I do for a living, each day I can provide a different answer. One day I might be gathering and saving seeds for next year’s garden or harvesting wild herbs for a winter tea; another day might be spent in household repair, community organizing, or researching and writing a grant for a nonprofit organization. I’ve learned the wisdom in giving due time each day to labor of the mind and of the body and to quiet reflection that feeds the spirit. I value my free time and open schedule far more than any accumulation of cash or property, security, or prestige. The freedom to choose how I will be with each moment is a gift and a challenge that I count as my greatest wealth.

Living on the edge, more or less, over the years I have honed the skills and nurtured an attitude of wholesome poverty. Meeting basic needs without a substantial cash flow has been least stressful when I’ve lived within a stable community where interdependence and cooperative values are practiced. But during my nomadic years I learned to trust in the kindness of strangers and the serendipity of life. I came to value the gifts of the pilgrim spirit and to recognize the importance of the itinerant wayfarer in the lives of the comfortably settled.

I’ve lived and traveled aboard small sail boats, in a tipi, in rural cabins, and in derelict inner-city housing, trading cleanup and repair for rent. I’ve made do in the back of an old school bus and afloat on a homemade houseboat on a Mississippi backwater. I’ve worked in a cooperative shelter for displaced women and children, with room and board as compensation, and I’ve battered for home and garden space by exchanging pet and plant care.

My primary transportation is the slow way. As a pedestrian, a bicyclist, and a bus rider, I keep a less frantic pace, and the more personal contact with those I encounter enriches the journey. I can borrow a car or catch a lift from a friend if necessary, and by paying my fair share of the cost, the cooperative way serves each of us.

Nutritious food is available in surprising abundance if one is willing to look to unconventional channels: I’ve participated in grassroots distribution networks of urban gleanings, intercepting the produce, grains, and other surplus foods otherwise lost. Best of all, I’ve learned to grow my own food in community gardens and backyard plots whenever I had the opportunity. As a worker-member at the local coop I claimed a significant reduction on food purchases, and by eliminating meat from my diet, the cost of my sustenance is affordable and sustainable.

Insurance against old age, disability, accident, or disease has never been an affordable option, nor one in which I place my faith. Catastrophic illness or accident or the incapacities of age could happen to anyone. Yet time and again, I’ve been sustained through economic precarity with help that comes at just the right moment. This has happened so often that I live with a trust that keeps fear at bay.

I have learned to lean into the present moment, focused on the work before me, while keeping a well-honed sense of the adventure of it all and a very real faith in the unfolding process. The inherent goodness of the universe has been made visible through the most unlikely of allies, and the travelers I’ve met along the way have been the wisest of teachers.

Peace Pilgrim, writing in her pamphlet, Steps Toward Inner Peace, recalled a visit to a city that had been her home:

In the poorer sections I am tolerated. In the wealthier sections some glances seem a bit startled, and some are disdainful. On both sides of us as we walk are displayed the things that we can buy if we are willing to stay in the orderly lines, day after day, year after year… Thousands of things are displayed — and yet the most valuable things are missing. Freedom is not displayed, nor health, nor happiness, nor peace of mind. To obtain these, my friends, you too may need to escape from the orderly lines and risk being looked upon disdainfully.

Stepping outside the tyranny of “orderly lines” and daring to risk the uncertainties of disaffiliation can make of our very lives a revolution. The way to the just and sustainable global community that we seek will open before us as we walk.

Another article in the same issue took the “voluntary simplicity” idea and ran with it. Starting with Jesus’s one-sentence summary of his teachings — love your neighbor as much as you love yourself — the authors took this to mean “taking our fair share of global resources and no more.” This starts with refusing war taxes because militarism is directly destructive of “our global neighbors.” But that’s just step one of a six-step process.

Step two would be to imagine the world’s resources shared equally, which, the authors assert, means “an annual ‘fair share’ of just over $3,000 per person.” But because the world is not using its resources in an environmentally sustainable way, step #3 is to reduce this fair share some more, to a more sustainable level: $1,800 per person per year. But since that much money would go further in a place like the United States, where it’s relatively easier to live off the cast-offs of the wealthy, level #4 “challenges us to live on even less than level three, since we have an easier time doing so in a society with a relatively affluent public infrastructure.”

We’re not done yet. Level #5 considers the non-monetary wealth most Americans enjoy because of the relatively high levels of medical care and education they have had access to. “With such advantages (and others), we ought to be able to live on less resources than folks who lack education and have chronic medical problems.” Finally, level #6 is for those who are not hampered by disabilities, encouraging them to sacrifice yet more so as to leave more for those who have to struggle harder.

Challenging? Certainly. Even the authors only seem to have made it half way to step #2, limiting their income as a couple to $12,000 a year. Some other choices they made were to “keep the majority of our savings in the form of non-interest-bearing loans” so as to avoid the sin of usury, and to “give away each year an amount equal to what we spend on ourselves.”

(A letter-to-the-editor in the October issue criticized this radical simplicity, saying it smacked of “intelligent, able-bodied adults who consciously decide to let others subsidize” the benefits of society. In particular: “In reducing their income to avoid paying taxes to support the military, this couple also avoids paying taxes that support the other half of the federal budget. So, there goes their support for many of the roads they use, for medical research they might avail themselves of through that subsidized doctor, for other federally supported scientific and social research, for national parks, and so forth. The authors are obviously well educated. Their education was probably supported by local, state, and federal subsidies. One wonders if they are repaying society for the educational benefit they’ve received.”)

Another brief note in the July issue reported on the results of a “penny poll” that had been “conducted by Christian Peacemaker Teams in Elkhart, Ind.” and had indicated that those polled implicitly supported huge reductions in military spending.

A letter-to-the-editor from Marjorie Schier and Suzanne Day of the “Philadelphia Yearly Meeting War Tax Concerns Support Committee” published in the September issue summarized the war tax issue as they saw it:

Resisting taxes

When a draft call finds some conscientious objectors unable to participate in war, the government not only has provided them alternatives, but also has proceeded to draft others who will participate. It is individual conscience that makes the difference, not how the government allocates the recruits. Some Friends have been unable to enlist, and some cannot voluntarily send dollars in federal tax for military uses.

Interacting with the federal government through tax resistance as witness for peace is more than symbolic; it can be earnest, meaningful religious conscience in action. However, it does not change how the government allocates its resources, and efforts to witness for changed priorities are also significant. Many Friends and others work for passage of the Peace Tax Fund Bill by the U.S. Congress because it would not only provide a legal opportunity for pacifists to pay their full federal tax without supporting war, but also give the government an indication of the numbers of citizens exercising this option.

Yes, the federal tax on telephone service is refused by many pacifists (with a note of explanation accompanying the refusal and redirection of the money for constructive purposes) because that tax was specifically reinstated to support the war in Vietnam. Federal bookkeeping does not distinguish certain tax streams for specific purposes, and has not since John Woolman wrestled with this same issue. Nevertheless, many Friends are prompted to take a stand for peace via taxes and thereby find a forum for disclosing that witness with meetings, governmental representatives, families, and neighbors.

An obituary notice for Abram Bresel Goldstein in that same issue noted that “[t]hough he worked briefly for the Internal Revenue Service, Abram left that position during the Korean War to avoid aiding the collection of taxes for war.”

On 8 November, NWTRCC and the War Tax Concerns Support Committee of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting sponsored a seminar on “Corporate Conscience and War Taxes” at the Moorestown, New Jersey, Meeting (according to a calendar listing in the November issue).

Priscilla Adams

The war tax resistance of Quaker Priscilla Adams became a cause célèbre that played out over nearly a decade in the Friends Journal starting in 1997. I’ll break with my chronological examination of the Journal for a while to follow this thread.

The July 1997 issue introduces Adams and her legal case:

Priscilla Adams, a war tax resister and member of Haddonfield (N.J.) Meeting, is challenging the IRS in court under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). Her case is the first of its kind to test conscientious war tax resistance since the passage of the RFRA in 1993. Priscilla and her lawyer, Peter Goldberger, will challenge two points covered by the act: the government’s use of penalties against war tax resisters for their stands of conscience; and the lack of a government accommodation for conscientious objectors to paying for war (like a Peace Tax Fund). The RFRA states that in conflicts between the government and religious freedom, the government must show compelling state interest and then use the least restrictive means necessary. In this case, Priscilla is challenging the government’s lack of recognition of conscience in response to the IRS assessing her taxes and penalties. She and Peter are arguing that under RFRA, the IRS should waive penalties for religious war tax resisters as long as they recognize other forms of reasonable cause for noncompliance with the tax law. They also are stating that the RFRA requires the enactment of something like a peace tax fund for religious war tax resisters who are willing to accept a reasonable accommodation, such as earmarking tax monies for non-warlike purposes in the federal government. The case has completed its earliest procedural stages and will be heard in United States Tax Court. Though no date has been set, lawyers expect a trial date this fall. Priscilla has participated in several clearness committees and is receiving guidance and support from Haddonfield Meeting, the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s War Tax Concerns Support Committee, the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund, and family and friends.

The June 1998 issue gave an update:

Priscilla Adams… will appeal the court’s decision rejecting her right to refuse to pay taxes. The case went before the Philadelphia Tax Court, where Adams presented an extensive outline of Quaker history and beliefs related to war tax objections. The court’s decision states, “Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 does not exempt Quaker from federal income taxes, despite taxpayer’s religious opposition to military expenditures.” Since October 1997, Rosa Packard of Purchase (N.Y.) Meeting and Gordon and Edith Browne of Plainfield (Vt.) Meeting also have filed complaints in federal district courts seeking to protect their conscientious acts of war tax refusal.

The March 1999 issue mentioned her appeal:

Tax resister Priscilla Lippincott Adams… faced the Federal Court of Appeals on January 14. Her case against the IRS for penalizing her for her religious objections to paying the military through taxes was dismissed in March 1998… The court had the choice of hearing oral arguments or making a decision based on the written briefs. In a positive turn, the judges heard oral arguments. Adams said her lawyer, Peter Goldberger, passionately presented her case, “just like a lawyer on T.V.” The three judges will now make a decision, a process that could take anywhere from six weeks to six months.

From there, to the Supreme Court, according to a December 1999 press release that formed the basis for a February 2000 Journal news brief:

Philadelphia Yearly Meeting has filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of its member, Priscilla Adams… who petitioned the high court in November 1999, following unsuccessful efforts in lower courts to obtain government accommodation for her conscientious objection to paying war taxes by allowing her to pay federal taxes without paying for military expenditures. Her employer, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, supports religious witness by not forwarding the military portion of a conscientious objector’s taxes to the IRS. A Peace Tax Fund, where tax dollars of conscientious objectors would be directed exclusively to nonmilitary programs, is one possible solution to the dilemma for adherents to nonviolence; a bill to establish a Peace Tax Fund has been introduced in every Congress since 1972.

…Lower courts addressed the issue of accommodating war tax resistance only by declaring that the government has a compelling interest in collecting taxes; the courts have not dealt with the arguments that accommodation of conscientious objection would be possible within the context of mandatory participation in taxation. The Supreme Court has not heard any case that raises these religious liberty questions under the 1993 law.

By then it was too late, though. The March 2000 issue noted that Adams’s Supreme Court appeal had been turned down:

On January 19, 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear appeals by Gordon and Edith Browne and Priscilla Lippincott Adams to lower-court rulings that allowed the Internal Revenue Service to impose late fees and interest for their conscientious refusal to pay the military portion of their federal tax. The issue in this case was not paying the tax when forced to do so by the IRS, but whether a “religious hardship” existed that should enable them to pay without any penalties and interest. The lower-court rulings reaffirmed a statement of the Supreme Court in 1982 that “The tax system could not function if denominations were allowed to challenge [it] because tax payments were spent in a manner that violates their religious belief.” The Justice Department lawyers said that “Voluntary compliance with the tax laws is the least restrictive means of furthering the government’s compelling interest in collecting taxes.”… “We’re very disappointed that the Supreme Court will not be taking the opportunity to reinforce religious freedom and freedom of conscience,” said Marian Franz, executive director of the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund. “Congress seems like the most appropriate place where this human right can be protected.”

Adams wasn’t going to give up though. Whether or not the government was going to deign to make her war tax resistance legal, she was going to resist, and the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting was willing to help her. From the November 2003 issue:

The United States Department of Justice, Tax Division, is suing Philadelphia Yearly Meeting for refusing to forward wages of an employee to the Internal Revenue Service. The employee, Priscilla Adams, resists paying taxes for war and the military on the basis of religious conscience. The lawsuit, filed in July 2003, is a move to attain funds from PYM as recompense for taxes owed by Priscilla Adams, plus a 50-percent penalty for not garnishing her wages as instructed by the IRS in 2001. If the IRS succeeds, PYM would owe approximately $60,000.

On September 18, PYM’s Interim Meeting decided to respond to the lawsuit and defend its position in court. PYM stated that to garnish Priscilla Adams’s wages would infringe upon her religious beliefs, and PYM should not “be required to act as a collection agent for the government when doing so will require it to violate key tenets of the Quaker faith.”

Thomas Jeavons, PYM general secretary, commented in the Philadelphia Inquirer, “About 50 percent of our taxes pay for weapons and warfare… We have long sought the creation of a Peace Tax Fund, a government fund for nonmilitary use, where taxes of [those who regard paying for war as a violation of religious conscience] could go. Legislation for this has been in Congress for many years. It should be passed now.”

The January 2004 issue spelled out the Meeting’s legal argument:

On October 22, 2003, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting filed its answer to a Justice Department lawsuit that asks a $20,000 penalty to be imposed on them and seeks to make them the collection agent for the government. The yearly meeting’s response makes dear its intention to stand by its essential religious principles, and publicly defend the free exercise of religion on all possible grounds, including constitutional and statutory religious freedom defenses. The IRS contends that PYM must garnish the salary of one of its employees and members who refuses — in keeping with longstanding Quaker convictions — to pay taxes that support war and preparations for war. While the IRS could easily take other courses to collect the back taxes it claims are due, instead the federal government is trying to force a church to collect these funds for it, an action that would require this Quaker organization to violate its own essential religious convictions regarding freedom of conscience. PYM has refused to do so. The answer to the suit says that the government “asks the court to assist it in violating the most fundamental religious principles of an established church… Although those principles and the yearly meeting’s reasons for its actions have been painstakingly explained to the [government]… the complaint purports to set forth the history of this matter without even mentioning PYM’s efforts at communication and conciliation. Further, the complaint labels the Yearly Meeting’s religiously mandated actions as a ‘failure’ to submit to government coercion, and brands the [Quaker] theological scruples as ‘unreasonable’ and deserving of harsh penalties.” The news release from PYM adds, “Quakers have long been known for their religious pacifism, opposition to war, and support of religious freedom and freedom of conscience. PYM regrets that being true to its faith has now brought us into conflict with the government. The Quaker organization sees itself as defending freedom of religion and freedom of conscience — and not just for itself, but for all those who desire to be both good citizens and people of faith. While PYM regrets the need to resort to legal action, it looks forward to a full airing of the issues involved in a public forum where both the sound reasons and religious principles that guide this Quaker organization’s actions may be upheld. PYM’s defense will rest on the constitutional right to freedom of religion generally, and particularly as upheld and restated in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1994.”

The August 2004 issue reported on how far they’d gotten with that argument:

On June 21, A federal judge ruled that Philadelphia Yearly Meeting must comply with a levy on the wages of war tax refuser Priscilla Adams, but rejected a 50 percent penalty desired by the Internal Revenue Service. U.S. District Judge Stewart Dalzell agreed with the Quaker argument that complying with the levy “substantially burdens its exercise of religion,” because, as PYM General Secretary Thomas Jeavons earlier testified, the organization “considers it a sacred duty to support the conscientious actions of its individual members, especially in such historic witnesses as the Peace Testimony.” Judge Stewan Dalzell also agreed that the PYM defense “raised novel and important questions,” thus demonstrating in this instance that the previous refusal of PYM to comply was not a frivolous activity. But he disagreed that the IRS had practical alternative means to collect taxes from Priscilla Adams. The government should not be required “to engage in a time-consuming, and possibly fruitless, scavenger hunt for other assets.” In 1999, the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had already rejected Priscilla Adams’s claim that the government could devise a means for earmarking taxes for nonmilitary expenditures, stating that there were “particularly difficult problems with administration should exceptions on religious grounds be carved out by the courts.”

That issue also noted:

Film students from Brooklyn Friends School are directing and producing a video documentary about Quaker peace activist Priscilla Adams. The students came to Friends Center in Philadelphia to interview her about how her religious beliefs led her to refuse payment of taxes in order to avoid contributing to military funding. The students also interviewed George Lakey, head of Training for Change, and Gene Hillman, adult religious education coordinator for Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. This documentary film may be an entry for Bridge Film Festival, which is open to middle and upper school students at Quaker schools worldwide.

The May 2005 issue noted that the film had been made — a 16-minute short titled A Need to Witness. And hey, look — it’s on-line:

War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in 1998

War tax resistance was largely found in infrequent mentions in the back pages of the Friends Journal in 1998.

The February issue noted a new information sheet that had been put together by “National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund, New Call to Peacemaking, Church of the Brethren, Mennonite Central Committee, and the War Tax Concerns Support Committee of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting” called Stages of Conscientious Objection to Military Taxes that listed “five steps to ending one’s own contribution to the war machine.” (Here is the 2009 edition of the sheet.)

That same issue included a review of a murder mystery, Quaker Testimony by Irene Allen, whose victim was “a young woman being evicted from her home for nonpayment of taxes.”

On 25 June, Quaker war tax resister Gordon Browne addressed a letter to the judge hearing his and his wife’s case in which they were encouraging the court to find that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act required the government to make concessions for religiously-motivated conscientious objectors to military taxation. This letter, and an accompanying article by Browne, did not appear in the Journal until March of the following year

After years as military tax refusers, during which we experienced the usual seizures of assets by the Internal Revenue Service, Edith Browne and I felt that the 1993 passage of the Restoration of Religious Freedom Act might provide us some relief. Past court decisions had made clear that exemptions from such taxes on the grounds of conscientious objection to participation in war or in preparation for war would be denied. The new act, however, suggested that we might be exempted from the interest and penalties routinely added to whatever the IRS claimed we owed. We filed for refunds, therefore, for the interest and penalties for the years 1993–95, and, when the refunds were denied, brought suit in Federal District Court in Vermont for their recovery.

Though we had filed our case independently of any others, we soon learned that Priscilla Adams in Pennsylvania and Rosa Packard in New York, both, like us, Quakers, had filed similar suits in their areas. In responding to the three suits, the attorneys for the IRS linked them, responding, for example, to our suit by alleging to the court that we had followed a practice in our tax refusal which was Rosa Packard’s method, not ours. The government moved for dismissal without a hearing, and our case was dismissed, as Priscilla Adams’ case had been earlier in Tax Court and as Rosa Packard’s was subsequently in District Court. Feeling that we had not been heard, we have filed an appeal.

A relative novice in legal proceedings, I was struck by the fact that the legitimate requirement of objectivity in dealing with legal matters risks the depersonalization of the search for justice, which is, after all, about human beings, both as individuals and in community. With our case decided in Vermont (the Appeals Court is in New York), I felt a strong need to write to our Vermont judge as a person. I did so but have received no response. For those who might be interested, I offer below what my letter said. I omit the judge’s name and address, lest some generous Friends be tempted to write to him on our behalf. I did not write with the purpose of applying political pressure but to try to establish a personal link.

---

Edith Browne and I are not familiar with legal practices, our present case asking the refund of penalties and interest charged by the Internal Revenue Service being the first case we have ever been involved in. It is my understanding, however, that having accepted the government’s motion to dismiss our petition, you are no longer involved in the case, and it will not be improper for me to write to you about it.

Naturally, we were disappointed with your decision and are appealing it to another court, in part because we felt the decision distorted what we have done and said and partly because we feel certain that it was the intention of the authors of the First Amendment to the Constitution and of the recent Restoration of Religious Freedom Act to make room in our national community for views such as ours. That certainty is a source of great pride to us. We know that there are many places in the world where a claim such as ours not only would have no status but might place the claimants themselves in danger. We have been in such places for varying lengths of time: in Greece under the fascist colonels; in Turkey when it was under martial law because of terrorist bombings; in Colombia when it was under martial law because of assassinations of members of the judiciary; in South Africa under apartheid, where even to visit our coreligionists in Soweto without government permission made us and our friends liable to arrest. We are grateful for the individual freedoms we citizens of the United States enjoy.

To us, one of the most important of these is freedom of conscience, provided for in the “exercise” section of the First Amendment. The founders of our nation knew about its need from painful experience in the religious wars and persecutions that were so often a curse in Europe. Further, they had seen the effort to import such ills to the New World. Four members of our own religious denomination, Quakers, were hanged on Boston Common and 14 more were waiting in prison for such treatment when Charles Ⅱ ordered the Puritan authorities to end such executions. That did not prevent, however, their continuing to exile Quakers and others who held differing religious views from theirs or, in the case of many Quakers, to whip them out of the colony at the tail of a cart, or to bore hot irons through the tongues of those who had tried to preach in public, or to cut off their ears. All of those things were done to Quakers in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. That history is not pretty, but it made our forebears sensitive to the rights of conscience.

For more than 30 years, Edith and I, seeking to fulfill both our civic responsibilities and our understanding of God’s will for us, have paid our full tax, sending that part intended for the Department of Defense to life-affirming and life-supporting organizations. We cannot in conscience pay for war or its preparation. During that long period, the IRS has seized our assets to pay that part we sent elsewhere and imposed, in addition, interest and penalties. This has meant that we annualy paid some of our taxes twice, once to life-supporting organizations and again to the IRS when our funds were seized. We knew no way out of this situation, except to suffer it. When the Restoration of Religious Freedom Act was passed we thought that, at last, we might be spared those penalties and that interest, which, to us, seemed to be saying, in denial of our finest American traditions of religious freedom, “Every conscience has its price. How much is yours?”

In your opinion, you suggested, as Patrick Leahy has in correspondence with me when I have sought his help in providing legislative relief, that consideration of matters of conscience in regard to taxes would result in chaos. We are not aware of chaos resulting from the legislative provisions for conscientious objectors to conscription of their bodies. Wise legislators seemed to us to provide for conscientious objectors to conscription of their resources through the Restoration of Religious Freedom Act. And if it is chaos we fear, what chaos is worse than that resulting from war?

I did not write this letter intending to argue our case, though I guess, perhaps, I have. I really do mean to leave that to the lawyers. Rather, I wrote to ask who will defend liberty of conscience if individuals like us and the courts do not. There are always those among us who would impose their religious views on everyone else if they could, just as there are those who would insist that religion provides no legitimate exceptions in consideration of public policy. It has been the genius of our system to try to provide a balance between those extremes that infringes on the freedoms of no one.

I enclose two [several] pages from the Book of Faith and Practice of New England Yearly Meeting of Friends. It is the volume that describes the experience of Friends and the practices arising from those experiences to which most Friends subscribe. I hope you will find them interesting and informative. I particularly call your attention to the story of William Rotch of Nantucket. Like him, if we are in error, we are to be pitied, but, also, like him, we can do no other than we are.

A history of the Atlanta, Georgia, Meeting during the Vietnam War that appeared in the July issue mentioned that the Meeting had “refused to pay the ten percent war tax imposed on telephone bills.”

That issue also noted that the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund was still doggedly gnawing away at the federal bureaucracy, this time meeting “with tax policy officials at the Department of the Treasury” to try to persuade them that the law would be in their interests and that they should override IRS objections to the bill.

In the course of a book review in the same issue, Errol Hess remembered his “struggles with my own complicity in the [Vietnam] war by virtue of paying taxes that supported it; [and] my decision to go into the underground economy, to live cheaply, to refuse to comply with the IRS as I’d refused to comply with my draft board.”

The Baltimore Yearly Meeting met in August. A report in the Journal the following year noted: “Frank and Elizabeth Massey’s testimony against war taxes led to an ‘opportunity’ on the doorstep of the yearly meeting office with an Internal Revenue Service agent, an explanation of its basis in faith. We continue to struggle with how best to provide practical support to these leadings.”

The December issue included this note about questionable tactics by IRS collection agents:

The Internal Revenue Service cashed a photocopy of a check from a Quaker war-tax resister. Grace Montgomery of Stamford-Greenwich (Conn.) Meeting has tried to resolve this issue for several years. Montgomery places the military portion of her federal income tax in a Friends escrow account. The IRS then usually levies her bank account for the amount owed. But in 1993 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.” (From The Mennonite, August 25)

An obituary notice for Richard M. Johnson in the same issue noted that “Dick found himself philosophically opposed to the idea of paying income and war taxes, and he and [his wife] Cynthia chose to resign their jobs and live out their lives on a nontaxable income as subsistence homesteaders. They moved to Monroe, Maine, along with three of their four children, where they helped establish a community land trust.”

While I was busy going through Friends Journal back issues, I didn’t attend much to American tax resistance news in the here-and-now, so I’ll try to give a recap today of some of the interesting items that caught my notice:

Cursing the IRS

Internal Revenue Service agents found an unwelcome surprise — and a possible witchcraft curse — on Friday when unknown individuals left a trio of charred, headless chickens outside the agency’s McAllen offices.

War tax protest

Some Christian war tax resisters in Michigan held a small “Independence from War Tax Day” demo that included symbolic burnings of tax forms. “The common citizen is not being listened to,” wrote participant Michael J. McCarthy. “We must learn to vote with our money, as the powerful do. April 15^th becomes the new second Tuesday in November. This tax redirection is one of a number of lifestyle changes that people can make to better participate in a real community-responsible democracy.”

McCarthy also wrote up his thoughts for USCatholic.org. Excerpts:

In 2007, facing the probability that the Iraq War was unjust, a group of Catholics in my community in Port Huron, Michigan, openly informed IRS that we would redirect hundreds of dollars from our federal taxes, donating this “Iraq Peace Bond” instead to our local library. Our donation was merely a drop in the bucket of the trillions wasted in this war, but a small step in a new direction. Most of the money was eventually recovered by IRS, but the donation still helps the community and serve as an inspiration to find further methods to invest in the works of peace, not war.

The problem for us in the United States is non-cooperation with evil — a difficult feat when so much of our tax money (more than 50 percent of all federal income tax, or 25 percent of total income tax) is spent on war. There are, however, alternative ways to turn away from it towards peacemaking. It is possible to take some of the money you would have offered to the troubled war economy and homeland security and spend it instead on the works of mercy, from feed the hungry to investing in creative work opportunities for our young people to donating to your local Christian pregnancy care centers.

You must inform the IRS of your intentions, and your wish to be a responsible citizen while also divesting from this war economy. The dialogue that follows with them can be kept cordial. For the practical measures, contact the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee. My wife and I have tried war tax resistance/redirection for 17 of the 35 years of our marriage, with varied results — some trial and tribulation, a lot of good done within our faith and larger communities.

Arthur Silber

Arthur Silber, of the blog Once Upon a Time…, shared the story of an IRS levy on his PayPal account. Excerpts:

For years now, because I knew the IRS was out to get me at some point, I’ve kept the balance in my PayPal account very, very low. Whenever I made pitches for donations, I withdrew the funds almost immediately. But because my health has now gotten so much worse, I wasn’t able to make as many trips as I wanted to the closest ATM. It’s only a block and a half away, but given my enormous difficulties in getting around, it might as well be a couple of miles. The heat in L.A. didn’t help, either. That’s the reason there were still funds left for the IRS to get. My apologies and regrets again, both for all the kind donors and for my sorry ass.

However, I’m not content to let the matter stand there. That is, I’m not ready to lie down and die, which is what I’m certain they’d prefer. I obviously have no money to pay an attorney or tax specialist, but if there is anyone out there who would consider volunteering their expertise, I would like to find out if there are any options with the IRS at this point. I should tell you that I don’t want to pay them a single damned cent — I don’t choose to give funds to murderers and torturers, thank you (which is why the IRS was after me in the first place) — and I’d also like to get back at least some of the funds they’ve taken.

As I say, I suspected this might happen at some point, especially after PayPal began filing tax forms starting with the 2011 tax year. I had thought about providing a warning to donors that the IRS might suddenly swoop down, so that you kind people would be forewarned. I’m terribly sorry I didn’t do that. But since the IRS and I hadn’t communicated at all for years now, I thought (hoped) they might have forgotten about me. I mean, Jesus Christ, I have almost no money at all. And I didn’t receive any warning at all before this levy was imposed.

And that’s another aspect of this that absolutely enrages me. I know, we all know, that there are multibillion dollar companies (and individuals) who, with the aid of their fleet of top line attorneys and financial experts, pay next to no taxes at all — and in many cases, none, period. And yet these bastards come after me.

Well, to hell with them. This has made me so angry that I feel I have a new lease on life. With your help, I hope we can figure out a way around these difficulties. And just to show them, I’ll live for another ten goddamned years, and write another ten books’ worth of essays.

During the day, I tried to remember the last time I had any communication from the IRS. I’m almost certain it was close to ten years ago. Ten years, during which I had heard nothing at all. So I had thought that perhaps, mercifully, I’d fallen off their radar. I guess that’s a lesson for all of us: they never forget. If there is any way at all, they’ll get you in the end.

Sequester? Why, I hardly know her!

A Washington Post article about the terrible sequester begins:

Before “sequestration” took effect, the Obama administration issued specific — and alarming — predictions about what it would bring. There would be one-hour waits at airport security. Four-hour waits at border crossings. Prison guards would be furloughed for 12 days. FBI agents, up to 14.

At the Pentagon, the military health program would be unable to pay its bills for service members. The mayhem would extend even into the pantries of the neediest Americans: Around the country, 600,000 low-income women and children would be denied federal food aid.

But none of those things happened.

Partially this is because Congress quietly made exceptions to the sequester in some cases, but a lot of it is because all of the alarm was bluff, and when agencies finally did have to cut their budgets, they found that there was plenty of stuff they could cut fairly painlessly.

The act of screaming bloody murder while engaging in mostly-symbolic belt-tightening seems to be a global phenomenon. In an article for Negocios.com, Jorge Valín says, of the Spanish version of budget cuts, “ ‘austerity’ doesn’t work (because it doesn’t exist).” Excerpts (my translation):

There is much debate on the issue of Government austerity. Those with a leftist mindset accuse it of generating poverty, reducing welfare, and even killing people when it comes to health. The rightists insist that government spending has to be checked, and in this sense austerity is good.

Since the beginning of the year, the government has created three new bodies per month, whether commissions, committees, councils, centers, or agencies of some type. The government propaganda agencies receive more than a billion euros in additional subsidies to what they had at the beginning of the economic crisis. In fact, government spending grows year after year even without mentioning the exponential growth of the debt. Austerity doesn’t work because it does not exist.

…It simply does not happen; it’s propaganda and a stalling measure. And the big problem with austerity is that it is just another government program.… The government, any government, is simply incapable of reducing its drag on the economy or to eliminate its debt.

Unfortunately, the politicians are incapable of doing anything. They would lose their power. So the other option is to force austerity on the state. The politicians live on our work and there’s no moral or technical reason why they have to plunder us with taxes this way. Tax resistance is not only a moral position, it’s a necessity before a corrupt status quo in which criminals prosper.

Tax reform

Some of our feckless legislators are trying to come up with some sort of radical tax reform plan. Of course it’s unlikely that this Congress will ever agree on much of anything, but some future Congress is likely to try to pass something that they’ll call radical tax reform, so it’s worth at least keeping an eye on things like this.

Of course, whatever they come up with will be awful. And the motivations of the politicians will have a lot less to do with trying to make the tax system better or more efficient (even by government standards), and more to do with the fact that radical tax reform is an incredible shakedown opportunity, where every deep-pocketed son of a bitch with a stake in tax subsidies will have to pony up if they want to keep their cash cow alive.

But keep in mind that tax simplification, even when it’s accomplished in such an ugly way, and even if it doesn’t shrink the budget by a nickel, can still shrink government somewhat. So there may yet be reasons to smile.

Taxpatriates

I didn’t make much noise about it last quarter, when the Treasury Department announced its highest quarterly total number of people who had renounced their U.S. citizenship (679), as there was some indication that this had been an accounting fluke caused by names being shifted from one quarter to another.

But the latest report broke the record again — substantially — with 1,130 Americans saying “goodbye and good riddance.”

The educated guesses about why this recent surge of citizenship renunciations has taken place say that it has less to do with people becoming increasingly ashamed at having to call themselves Americans, or with eagerness to avoid U.S. taxes, and more to do with the onerous paperwork requirements that the U.S. government requires from its citizens — even of those who live overseas and who conduct little activity back in the “land of the free.”

A more do-it-yourself approach to taxpatriatism was tried by the Gastonguay family, who fled the United States in part because they were upset at being “forced to pay these taxes that pay for abortions we don’t agree with.” They boarded a small boat and sailed for Kiribati, a remote set of islands with a total population of a little over a hundred thousand people, where they hoped their religious practices and beliefs would be better-tolerated. But they never made it there, instead getting storm-tossed and lost at sea for three months before getting rescued and taken instead to Chile, from which, they said, they planned to return to the United States, at least for now.

Peace Tax Fund

Peter J. Reilly, at his Forbes blog, takes a look at the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act.

Jerry Kirk

Jerry Kirk of Searcy County, Arkansas, one of that odd crop of American tax protesters who adhere to incredibly baroque legal systems of their own devising, refused to pay his county taxes whereupon the government seized and sold some of his property.

He responded by doing something I haven’t seen a tax protester of that ilk do before: he redirected his unpaid taxes by handing out envelopes of money to people in front of the county courthouse. Here’s a video of the event:

What “sales tax holidays” reveal

Some American states that use a sales tax to raise revenue also periodically have “sales tax holidays” as a fiscally silly cheap ploy for the sympathies of the chamber of commerce set — often holding these holidays in late Summer when parents are doing their back-to-school shopping. Michael Graham looked at the psychology behind these holidays, and suspects they reveal a simmering resentment of government:

Let’s face it: As a marketing strategy, a 6.25 percent sale is embarrassing. What car dealer has ever run ads saying “Today Only — Save Just Over A Nickel On The Dollar!” When does Macy’s ever post “6.25 Percent Off!” over their junior miss selection?

And yet, the sales tax holiday weekend is huge. The stores are packed. It’s like a mini-Christmas in the dog days of August.

Next weekend, when you see Massachusetts shoppers waiting in long lines to buy stuff they could have bought two days earlier without any hassles, they’re showing you just how hard they will work to stick it to the state.

A new edition of NWTRCC’s newsletter has just come out, with content including:

• a look back at this year’s “tax day” actions
• concerns about the statute of limitations for tax debt and about IRS audits
• updates on the Peace Tax Fund (including an amusing note about an American Legion chapter that felt duty-bound to oppose it)
• some international news including a municipal pension munitions divestment campaign in Britain and the Comprehensive Disobedience movement in Spain
• a report back from the NWTRCC national gathering in San Diego
• Robert Randall’s personal look at the ramifications of the Affordable Care Act for war tax resisters

At the upcoming national gathering of NWTRCC at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, I’m going to be presenting a summary of the history of war tax resistance in the Society of Friends (Quakers).

Today I’m going to try to coalesce some of the notes I’ve assembled about the renaissance of Quaker war tax resistance during the Cold War. Much of what I have assembled here comes from my close look at the archives of the Friends Journal, the only Quaker publication from this period I have reviewed thoroughly, and so whatever editorial biases that publication may have had may also bias my history of this phase.

There is a lot that happens in this short period of time, and in some places my narrative is going to be condensed into a bunch of bullet-point-like summaries of the rapid-fire events to try to keep up with it all.

The Renaissance (1959–1991)

The modern war tax resistance movement began in the wake of World War Ⅱ in the United States. There had been isolated war tax resisters here and there in other places in recent years, and there was a quiet war tax resistance tendency hiding under the surface of the Society of Friends, but things did not come out into the open in any organized and growing fashion until then.

Quakers were not in the forefront of this movement, but Quaker war tax resisters took courage from it, and it wasn’t long before they began trying to reestablish the war tax resistance traditions in the Society of Friends. The earliest mention of this that I have found from this period concerns Franklin Zahn of the Pacific Yearly Meeting, who was distributing a leaflet on war tax resistance as early as 1959.

A report on the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting that year noted that the subject of war taxes had come up and had led to what sounds like a long and earnest discussion:

Few present felt it right to refuse to pay, nor yet felt comfortable to pay. Varied suggestions were presented: Send an accompanying letter expressing one’s feeling about war; live so simply that income is below tax level; make no report, but once a year send a check for nonmilitary purposes; engage in peace walks and other minority demonstrations; follow Jesus’ example of rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; beware of taking for granted the evils deplored, such as riding on military planes; associate more closely with the Mennonites, who share Friends’ concerns; rise above one’s own shortcomings through personal devotion; work to unite with all Friends Yearly Meetings in refusal to pay taxes. Nothing can be done unless there is a willingness to suffer unto death.[!]

The blinders put on during the Great Forgetting period were still evident. An article in a 1960 issue of the Friends Journal described “refusal to pay taxes for support of war effort emerging as a new testimony” [my emphasis]. Another article from the same issue, titled “The Quaker Peace Testimony: Some Suggestions for Witness and Rededication” didn’t mention taxes at all.

By this time some Friends in Switzerland had been refusing to pay war taxes (I would guess, under the tutelage of Pierre Cérésole).

In 1961 some Quakers in the Pacific Yearly Meeting began to sketch out the initial drafts of a legislative “peace tax” proposal which they envisioned would be a way for conscientious objectors to pay their taxes into a fund that the government could only spend on non-military items. The idea that there might be a legislative solution that could make tax-paying no longer an act of complicity with war would bob up throughout this period, until, by the end of it, the temptation of lobbying instead of committing to direct action would contribute to the eventual decline of war tax resistance in the Society of Friends.

That year also, the Yellow Springs Monthly Meeting issued a statement of support for war tax resisters, the first example of new institutional support for war tax resistance in the Society of Friends that I could find from the 20^th century.

In 1962 there was a burst of excitement about war tax resistance in the Baltimore Yearly Meeting (yet a survey of 350 adults from that meeting found only two or three who were willing to consider actually becoming resisters; whereas almost half of those surveyed were totally unconcerned about their tax money going to the military).

A group of about twenty Quakers, organized by Clarence Pickett and Henry Cadbury, met at the 1963 Philadelphia Yearly Meeting to discuss war tax resistance, but they were unable to come up with a consensus statement. Quaker war tax resister Arthur Evans was imprisoned for three months that Fall for his tax refusal.

In 1964 the Friends Journal ended what strikes me as a policy of editorial embarrassment about Quakers and war tax resistance by publishing its first article devoted to the practice, and one that also full-throatedly advocated it. This started a debate in the letters-to-the-editor column and certainly caused more Quakers to confront the question, directly or indirectly.

By the mid-sixties the tide was shifting rapidly. Before this time, individual Quaker tax resisters are unusual enough to highlight individually as being on the cutting-edge; after this, Quaker war tax resistance becomes commonplace enough that individual resisters are exemplars of a larger trend. In 1966 the New York Yearly Meeting promoted war tax resistance in an official statement, and promised financial assistance for any Quakers in the Meeting who might be forced to change jobs or to suffer other financial hardship for their stand. The statement in part read:

We call upon Friends to examine their consciences concerning whether they cannot more fully dissociate themselves from the war machine by tax refusal or changing occupations.

That was the most concrete advocacy of war tax resistance by a Quaker institution in years.

That year also Franklin Zahn wrote a booklet on Early Friends and War Taxes to reintroduce Quakers to their own history and to further banish the Great Forgetting.

The support from Quaker institutions and publications at this point is often noncommittal and is usually vague about exactly how to go about war tax resistance, which taxes to resist, and how to deal with government reprisals. There is nothing like the specific, concrete discipline of earlier Quaker Meetings. This means that Quaker war tax resisters from this period are largely making it up as they go along, conferring with each other informally and organizing, when they are organizing, in groups like Peacemakers, the War Resisters League, and the Committee for Non-Violent Action — that is to say, with non-Quaker groups. (There was briefly something called the “Committee for Nonpayment of War Taxes” run out of Quaker war tax resister Margaret G. Bowman’s home in 1966, but I have not found much about it.)

Quakers were using a broad variety of tax resistance tactics. Arthur Evans and Neil Haworth refused to pay some or all of their income taxes or to cooperate with an IRS summons for their financial records. Johan Eliot redirected twice the amount of his taxes to the United Nations to promote international federalism as a world peace strategy. Clarissa & Samuel Cooper lowered their family income below the tax line. John L.P. Maynard and Robert W. Eaton took pay cuts that reduced their incomes to the maximum allowable before federal income tax withholding was mandatory. Lyle Snyder stopped withholding by declaring three million dependents on his W-4 forms. Alfred & Connie Andersen stopped filing income tax returns. Some Quakers fled to Canada as taxpatriates to join the draft evaders there. Others deposited their taxes into escrow accounts and invited the IRS to seize the accounts while refusing to pay voluntarily. Lloyd C. Shank advocated “the ‘sneaky’ way” of tax resistance — what many people would call tax evasion — saying “ ‘cheating’ is only an oppressive government’s name for a good man’s refusal to murder.” Phone tax resistance was beginning to become widespread, and many Quaker meetings began resisting this tax on their office phones (one meeting was unable to reach consensus on resisting the phone tax and compromised by dropping its phone service entirely). People too timid to resist, and meetings unable to reach consensus on resisting, might instead write their legislators to urge them to enact some form of legal conscientious objection to military taxation. The most timid groups, like the American Friends Service Committee, urged people to pay taxes “under protest” or to match their war tax payments with additional payments to the AFSC.

Robert E. Dickinson had perhaps the most creative tactic of the bunch. He designed and built a set of furniture for his home that was formed of interlocking sheets of plywood such that it could be quickly disassembled and hidden away. He called this “my tax refusal furniture” and meant it to frustrate IRS attempts to seize furnishings from him for back taxes.

Two Quaker employees of two groups within the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting asked their employers to stop withholding income tax from their paychecks, and that Meeting tried to come up with a good policy to follow in such cases.

The fourth Friends World Conference was held in the Summer of 1967. The “Protest and Direct Action group” there “called upon Friends in countries party to the [Vietnam] conflict to ‘go as far as conscience dictates in withholding support from their governments’ war-making machinery,’ first by direct communication with those against whom the protest is made, and then if necessary by public witness and individual action, including the possibility of refusal to pay taxes for war.”

U.S. President Johnson called for a 10% income tax surcharge explicitly to fund the Vietnam War. This would be the first explicit “war tax” (other than, arguably, the phone tax) since World War Ⅱ, and its announcement prompted renewed interest in war tax resistance inside and outside the Society of Friends. Quakers were, because of this tax, better-enabled to quote the discipline of early Quakers on refusal to pay explicit war taxes as a way of explaining their own stands.

In October 1968 203 delegates from “nineteen Yearly Meetings, eight Quaker colleges, fifteen Friends secondary schools, the American Friends Service Committee National Board and its twelve regional offices, and nine other peace or directly-related organizations” met in Richmond, Indiana, to draft a “Declaration on the Draft and Conscription.” Part of this declaration mentioned the war tax concern:

We call on Friends everywhere to recognize the oppressive burden of militarism and conscription. We acknowledge our complicity in these evils in ways sometimes silent and subtle, at times painfully apparent. We are under obligation as children of God and members of the Religious Society of Friends to break the yoke of that complicity.

We also recognize that the problem of paying war taxes has intensified; this compels us to find realistic ways to refuse to pay these taxes.

After only ten years of thaw, some seventy years of Great Forgetting have been melted away, and the Society of Friends has again reached a consensus that Quakers are compelled to refuse to pay war taxes.

President Johnson’s war surtax went into effect in 1969, adding a 7.5% surtax to the income tax returns for the 1968 tax year, and 10% for the following year (the tax would be extended at a reduced rate into 1970 and then abandoned).

Meetings all across the country were discussing and passing minutes on war tax resistance, though few would advocate it in specific and unreserved ways, most choosing instead to voice expressions of unspecified “approval and loving support” for Quakers who felt compelled to resist. In 1970, the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting passed a relatively strong minute stating:

Refusal to pay the military portion of taxes is an honorable testimony, fully in keeping with the history and practices of Friends… We warmly approve of people following their conscience, and openly approve civil disobedience in this matter under Divine compulsion. We ask all to consider carefully the implications of paying taxes that relate to war-making… Specifically, we offer encouragement and support to people caught up in the problem of seizure, and of payment against their will.

The New York Yearly Meeting decided to begin resisting corporately by refusing to honor liens on the salaries of tax resisting employees (though it could not reach consensus on a refusal to withhold income tax from such employees), and, the following year, by refusing to pay its own phone tax.

The American Friends Service Committee finally decided to do something concrete about the war tax question, but it was a little odd. They withheld and paid taxes from a war tax resisting employee and then sued the government for a refund. The strange structure of their process seems to have been a very deliberate way to structure a legal suit for maximum effectiveness, and it did (briefly) show some success. A court ruled in 1974, on First Amendment freedom-of-religion grounds, that the government could not force the organization to pay the taxes of an objecting employee — alas, the Supreme Court almost immediately, and overwhelmingly, overturned this.

Also in 1974, Susumu Ishitani, a Japanese Quaker, formed a war tax resistance group in Japan — the first example I am aware of from Asia.

By the mid-1970s, the Friends Journal’s coverage of war tax resistance is less occupied with advocacy, debate, and the presentation of individual exemplars, and is more concerned with the practical aspects of how Quakers are going about it. The editorial stance shifts again, to one of more forthright advocacy. It is assumed that Quakers want to avoid paying war taxes, and the question is how to do so well.

The ending of the U.S. war on Vietnam did not seem to slow the enthusiasm for war tax resistance. In 1976 the Friends Journal devoted an issue to the subject for the first time. In 1977 Robert Anthony began another attempt to get the courts to legalize conscientious objection to military taxation. It went nowhere, but notably, in a letter to the court, his monthly meeting wrote:

We assert that the free exercise of the Quaker religion entails the avoidance of any participation in war or financial contribution to that part of the national budget used by the military.

If not exaggerated for effect, this statement would be among the strongest yet articulated by a Quaker institution in this renaissance period — not simply expressing support for war tax resisters, or encouraging Friends to consider resisting, but asserting that to practice the Quaker religion necessarily meant to refuse to pay war taxes.

In 1978, Quakers met with their Brethren and Mennonite counterparts to draft a joint statement that encouraged war tax resistance — the “New Call to Peacemaking.” The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting asked its ongoing representative meeting to draft some formal guidance for Quaker war tax resisters for how they should go about it, and to set up an alternative fund to hold and redirect resisted taxes. (New England Yearly Meeting began its own alternative fund for resisted taxes the following year.)

By this time war tax resistance is a core part of any discussion of the Quaker peace testimony, and there are increasing calls for Meetings to resist taxes as an institution.

In 1979 the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting approved a minute on war tax resistance that pulled its punches a bit:

Our strength and our security are derived from our belief in the reality of a loving God and the oneness of that of God in all people. In order to say yes to this belief, we must seriously consider saying no to payment of war taxes.

This “seriously consider” compares poorly to discipline of times past (e.g. “a tax levied for the purchasing of drums, colors, or for other warlike uses, cannot be paid consistently with our Christian testimony” [Ohio Yearly Meeting, 1819]). It also, some Quakers point out, sometimes pales next to the more direct and certain advice from some meetings that young Quaker men resist the draft.

As more Quakers and Meetings feel the pressure to take a stand on war taxes, the more timid ones are increasingly desperate to find ways to do so without actually having to resist. Silly ideas, like writing “not for military spending” in the memo field of their tax payment checks, and “peace tax fund” ideas proliferate. By 1982, Quakers in Canada and Australia are floating their own peace tax fund legislation ideas.

Meanwhile, Quakers in England seem to have gotten the tax resisting bug. The Friends World Committee for Consultation and London Yearly Meeting stopped withholding income taxes from twenty-five war tax resisting employees in 1982, putting the money in escrow. (This resistance was short-lived; after losing a legal appeal in 1985, they went back to withholding.)

In 1983 war tax resistance, according to Friends Journal reports, was a “major preoccupation” of the London Yearly Meeting, and a “burning concern” at the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (where “unity could not be achieved”). Lake Erie Yearly Meeting encouraged its Monthly Meetings “to establish meetings for sufferings to aid war tax resisters.” Pacific Yearly Meeting started an alternative fund.

Smaller Monthly and Quarterly meetings around the country were beginning to take even stronger stands. The Minneapolis and Twin Cities Meetings approved a minute that asked “all members of our meetings to practice some form of war tax resistance”! The Davis (California) meeting passed a similar minute. Monthly Meetings are assembling “clearness committees” to help each other find responses to the war tax problem that are appropriate to their conscientious “leadings.”

That year also, the Friends General Conference promoted the idea of Quakers giving interest-free loans to them, a thinly-veiled (not explicitly stated) way of hiding assets from IRS:

…Friends loan money to F.G.C. at no interest, which F.G.C. invests to earn income which is used to support the varied programs of the Conference, such as publications, religious education curricula, and the ongoing nurture program. These loans provide regular dependable monthly income to the Conference, and reduce the interest income on which the lender must pay federal income taxes, while providing the lender with protection against unforeseen financial reversals. F.G.C. will repay the principal amount within 30 days after receiving a written request from the lender. All principal amounts are kept in insured investments.

In 1984 the Friends Journal, now edited by a war tax resister, devoted another issue to the subject. Non-resisting Quakers were now very much on the defensive. One complained that at the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting that year, taxpaying Quakers like him “were compared to the Quaker slaveholders of the 18^th century, and not a dissenting voice was raised,” but even he had to acknowledge that war tax resistance was “in the mainstream of Quaker thought, and therefore entitled to support from Quaker bodies.”

The meeting itself though could only agree to issue another minute that would “not urge” Friends to resist, but would “give strong support” to those who did.

In 1985, the Friends World Committee for Consultation held a war tax resistance conference in Washington, D.C., and formed a standing “Friends Committee on War Tax Concerns.” The following year, they held a conference for Quaker organizations that had war tax resisting employees. The conference was attended by 35 people, including representatives from 21 such organizations. They were united by an interest in supporting the war tax resistance of their employees in an open and honest fashion, in a way that included the redirection of the resisted taxes to beneficial causes, and that used the “clearness committee” process.

You definitely get the feeling that momentum is building and Quaker war tax resistance is having a vigorous revival. Unfortunately, though, it seems to me that this is the high-water mark. In surprisingly little time the tide will begin to recede. But there is still some forward progress to be made.

In 1987 the London Yearly Meeting declared:

We are convinced by the Spirit of God to say without any hesitation whatsoever that we must support the right of conscientious objection to paying taxes for war purposes… We ask Meeting for Sufferings to explore further and with urgency the role our religious society should corporately take in this concern and then to take such action as it sees necessary on our behalf.

The Friends United Meeting adopted a policy of not withholding taxes from resisting employees that year as well. The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting soon followed suit, and refused to withhold federal taxes from three war tax resisters on the payroll (after a legal battle, they would pay “under duress” a few years later). The Baltimore Yearly Meeting also adopted such a policy, in 1990.

In 1988 another conference for employers of tax resisting employees was held, this one expanded to include Mennonite and Church of the Brethren employers. The Friends Journal got an IRS levy on the salary of its editor, and it devoted a third issue to the topic of war tax resistance. Some Quakers begin using the tax resistance tactic in the service of other causes, such as opposition to capital punishment or nuclear power.

In an early sign of the receding of the war tax resistance tide, the Friends World Committee for Consultation retired its “Friends Committee on War Tax Concerns” in favor of a “Committee on Peace Concerns.” From here, sadly, it’s pretty much all downhill. In the next and final segment of this series on the history of Quaker war tax resistance, I’ll try to describe and explore the second “forgetting.”

More tax resistance news in brief:

• Ruth Benn summarizes the talks by Lonnie Valentine and Joanna Swanger at the NWTRCC national gathering earlier this month.
• Rossella Fidanza tries to ease the fears of Italians who may be contemplating a tax strike by explaining in some detail the long and not particularly frightening process by which the Italian tax authorities pursue those who haven’t coughed up their tribute (a process that’s not too unlike what I’m familiar with in the U.S.). It’s so easy for a taxpayer in Italy to enter into an installment agreement and then put off the first payment for three and a half years, it seems, that Italian taxpayers could (if they chose) put their government in a world of hurt without risking much of anything themselves.
• El Universal has uncovered evidence that Mexico’s “pos me salto” fare-resistance movement has had help on the ground from advisors from the Brazilian “Passe Livre” movement.
• A West Auckland farmer who has been cheated out of some of his property via eminent domain has decided to take his revenge on the Durham County Council by withholding his council tax until he recovers the promised payment.
• Conscience U.K. has, alas, adopted the chimera of peace tax fund legislation, currently being floated in the form of a parliamentary “Early Day Motion.”
• The IRS is seemingly still unable to stem the tide of prisoners ripping it off by filing fraudulent tax refund claims from behind bars.

A new research paper hit the wires a little while back: How Government Spending Impacts Tax Compliance. Excerpts:

In an effort to further understand tax compliance behavior and find ways to mitigate noncompliance, we examine the impact of goal congruence in the context of how tax dollars are allocated to pay for government programs. Alm, McClelland, and Schulze (1992)^* argue that theoretical and experimental work ignores much evidence that tax compliance depends in part upon the use of tax revenue. Thus, we focus on how tax dollars are spent and the incongruence created when the government’s allocation does not coincide with the taxpayer’s personal views about government policies.

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^* Alm, J., G. H. McClelland, and W. D. Shulze. 1992. Why Do People Pay Taxes? Journal of Public Economics 48(1): 21–48.

Accordingly, we propose that in certain instances goals may not be aligned between the government and the taxpayer, providing taxpayers with a potentially justifiable (based on taxpayers’ personal views) incentive to cheat on their taxpaying responsibilities. Recent examples of misaligned goals are illustrated with growing groups who are intensely opposed to how tax dollars are spent by the government (e.g., tax resisters and conscientious objectors). The U.S. National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee estimates that about 10,000 people “resist” paying taxes in protest against military spending (USA Today 2006). Tax resisters often pay a portion of their taxes, but “deduct” an amount related to the spending with which they do not agree. Accordingly in a tax setting, goal congruence may not be an “all-or-nothing” variable, but rather taxpayers may have varying levels of opposition with the tax system. Thus, we hypothesize that taxpayers with low goal congruence (those who oppose or disagree with how tax dollars are spent) will be less likely to comply than taxpayers with high goal congruence (i.e., those whose goals are more closely aligned with the government).

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^* USA Today. 2006. National Tax War Resistance. Available at http://www.thepowerhour.com/news2/national_tax.htm, April 14.

From here things go a little sideways for a while. Although the authors have noted conscientious tax resisters as examples of people who do not pay their taxes because of a lack of “goal congruence” with the government, the paper sidetracks into a discussion of taxpayers with a high “Machiavellianism” score (“which measures the tendency of an individual to detach from ethical considerations and perform actions that profit the self”) and suggests that Machiavellian taxpayers are more likely to put their own goals ahead of the government’s while “low Machiavellian taxpayers will make decisions that are more conditioned by their emotions and internalized ethical principles, and goal congruence should have less impact on their compliance decisions.”

In summary, we posit that goal congruence will have less impact on low Machiavellian taxpayers, who are motivated by ethics than high Machiavellian taxpayers, who are motivated by self-interest.

This seems like a non-sequitur to me unless you somehow categorize the war tax resisters as high-Machiavellian people acting from self-interested, non-ethical motives, which doesn’t match any reality I’m familiar with.

The academic tax literature in general seems to be biased toward equating ethical behavior with compliant behavior when it comes to taxation and is reluctant to consider alternatives to this viewpoint even when, as in this case, the alternatives are staring them in the face.

(And as it turns out, their hypothesis about the interaction between Machiavellianism and goal congruence was not ultimately shown by their data.)

Be that as it may, here is a description of one of the experiments they devised:

Participants read a scenario about a hypothetical taxpayer who earned cash from self-employment and were told to assume either a low or high probability of audit. They were asked to put themselves in the position of the hypothetical taxpayer and to think about their views concerning tax dollars being used to fund national defense programs. Participants then recorded the amount of income that they would report on their tax return.

Goal congruence can be represented by the degree to which a taxpayer agrees with the government’s allocation of tax revenue to particular programs. Participants were informed that approximately 20 percent of the total federal budget is used to fund national defense programs, and they were reminded that when a taxpayer pays more tax, more of their tax dollars go to defense programs. In this experiment, goal congruence is measured by summing participants’ agreement (on seven-point Likert scales) with the following three statements (1) the way the government spends tax dollars on defense programs is effective, (2) defense programs are important, and (3) I support a percentage of my tax dollars going to support the current defense program.

Participants were asked how much of the $45,000 income earned by the hypothetical taxpayer they would report if they were in a similar situation to the hypothetical taxpayer. Participants recorded their responses on a sliding scale from $0 to $45,000, where the scale was marked in $5,000 increments.

The results: “participants reported less income when they felt low support for a tax program (mean=$34,080.32, s.d.=1058.64) than when they felt high support (mean=$38,183.44, s.d.= 1063.73). Specifically, taxpayers who agree with the government’s use of their tax dollars report more income than those who do not.”

Furthermore:

Results indicate that when the taxpayer supports a program, a higher audit rate increases income reporting (low audit rate mean $37,034.34 vs. high audit rate mean $39,332.51). However, when the taxpayer has low support for a program, a higher audit rate does not improve compliance. In fact, it has the opposite effect (low audit rate mean $35,146.04 vs. high audit rate mean $33,014.59).^* Importantly, this indicates that policy efforts aimed at increasing the audit rate may not be beneficial if the taxpayer does not find value in a program

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^* Consistent with this finding, research has found that deterrence-based compliance measures sometimes can be counterproductive (Murphy, K. 2005. Regulating More Effectively: The relationship between procedural justice, legitimacy, and tax non-compliance. Journal of Law and Society, 32 (4): 562–589).

The explicit goals of this research project were “to further understand tax compliance behavior and find ways to mitigate noncompliance,” and with this in mind, the authors make the following suggestion:

When taxpayers do not support government programs, their compliance is lower regardless of the audit probability. This highlights the importance of gaining taxpayer support for government programs and that attempts to align the goals of taxpayers and the government may be fruitful. Thus, programs such as The Conscientious Objection Act [a Canadian “peace tax” bill] and the [U.S. Religious Freedom] Peace Tax Fund Bill, may increase voluntary compliance among taxpayers.

This will warm the hearts of peace tax legislation supporters, who now have some academic support for their proposals that may resonate with money-hungry legislators. For those of us who think that to increase “voluntary” compliance with taxpaying is not such a hot idea, this will give us more reason to oppose such legislation.

There’s a new NWTRCC newsletter out, with content including:

• an invitation to the upcoming NWTRCC national gathering in Pennsylvania
• a discussion of U.S. citizenship and war tax resisters — both getting citizenship and giving it up
• notes on the Jeju naval base and the Troika Fiscal Disobedience Consultancy
• actions by Don Schrader, Don Timmerman, and Phil Runkel
• a profile of war tax resister Kathy Labriola

In other war tax resistance news:

• NWTRCC is keeping a list of nationwide war tax resistance protest actions taking place between now and tax day.
• Here’s a graphic and write-up from a member of Conscience Canada, the peace tax / war tax resistance group from the great white north, as found in Canadian Mennonite.
• Paper Money carried an article on the “Thoreau Money” banknote-like leaflets that were used by war tax resistance groups in the United States during the Vietnam War. The article goes into unusual detail about the history and structure of the war tax resistance movement in that period.
• War tax resistance season has begun in Spain, too. Here’s the announcement from Derecho de Rebelión.
• The group Conscience, from the U.K., has finalized its version of “peace tax” legislation, which it hopes to get Parliament to consider. It differs in some ways from other countries’ versions of this plan for implementing legalized conscientious objection to military taxation.

There’s a new issue of NWTRCC’s newsletter out. Contents include:

• introducing Sam Koplinka-Loehr, NWTRCC’s new field organizer / outreach consultant
• notes about real and phony communications from the IRS
• Conscience has introduced a “Taxes for Peace Bill” in the U.K. parliament
• reviews of John T. Schwiebert’s Resistance and Redirection, Clare Hanrahan’s The Half Life of a Free Radical: Growing up Irish Catholic in Jim Crow Memphis, and Paying the Price for Peace: The Story of S. Brian Willson
• reports from the People’s Justice and Peace Convention in Cleveland, from the Seattle Anarchist Bookfair, and from a Mennonite District Conference, among others
• a profile of war tax resister Nathan Beall

Today’s link dump:

• My local newsweekly, the New Times, covered my tax resistance today: Snubbing Uncle Sam: Local resident touts tax resistance as protest. They also did one of those we-ask-a-man-on-the-street sidebars where they asked four people: “What is your opinion on people who don’t pay taxes as a form of protest?” and got surprisingly positive answers. I expect the typical man-on-the-street to reach for the old familiar clichés about “who will fix the roads if we don’t pay our taxes” and so forth, but three out of four people who were asked supported tax resistance.
• Steve Ballmer, ex-Microsoft CEO, has launched a new project — USA Facts — that is meant to be a thorough, non-partisan, unbiased source of information about government spending. By non-partisan they mean “credulous and non-judgmental” and by unbiased they mean “exclusively relying on government sources,” so keep that in mind. It’s naively cheery about the federal government, by design:

  We soon discovered that dealing with something as big and complex as government — with its more than 90,000 jurisdictions and 23 million employees — required an organizing framework. What better place to look than the Constitution, and, more specifically, the preamble to the Constitution? It lays out four missions: “Establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility; provide for the common defense; promote the general welfare; and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” While we don’t make judgments about policy, we all agree on the broad purposes of government as laid out in the preamble to the Constitution.

  That said, it may end up being a useful source for some information about taxes and spending.
• NWTRCC has some follow-up on this year’s tax season:
  • Tax Day Reports, 2017
  • Tax Day Resistance, Redirection, and Planning Ahead
• The Satyagraha Foundation continues its series on tax resistance by reprinting my inaugural Picket Line post.
• Susan Lee Barton shares the letter she sent along with her tax return this year in lieu of a check.
• Peter and Mary Sprunger-Froese promoted war tax resistance in the letters-to-the-editor column of the Colorado Springs Independent.
• Erica Weiland discusses the decision of whether to be a public war tax resister, or to resist in a less-conspicuous way. (Read the comments, too.)
• Majorities of Americans are bothered that corporations and wealthy people don’t pay their fair share of taxes. And 56% of Americans describe the federal tax system as unfair — the highest percentage since the question was first asked 20 years ago.
• Here’s a new item in the pay-under-protest file: Scott Dion paid his property taxes with a check that said “sexual favors” in the “Memo” field. The government has been refusing to cash it.
• A restaurant patron paid the bill with a credit card, wrote “Taxation is theft — 0” in the “Tip” field, and left cash instead, with a note reading: “This is not a tip. This is a personal gift and not subject to federal or state income taxes.”
• Congressman John Lewis has again reintroduced the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act into the U.S. Congress.

Hannnelore Morgenstern, of the German “peace tax” group Netzwerk Friedenssteuer, sent me a recap of the Conscience and Peace Tax International conference that was held in London in June. (I have made some edits for clarity, as English is not Morgenstern’s best language):

Fourteen participants from six countries met to make the necessary decisions. Now the work of the Board has been strengthened and the assignments for our Geneva delegate have been appointed. Board members are Jan Birk, Derek Brett, Robin Brookes, Dietmar Czemy (chairman), and Milena Romero. If necessary, Chris Coverdale and Cathy Deppy want to support the board. And it needs support.

Since the transformation of the association, only a few countries have reregistered themselves. In order for us to continue our work, we must levy a membership fee from now on. The modest balance in our account only allows for three assignments to the CPTI delegate, Christophe Barbey, in Geneva. New ways of funding must be found.

It was agreed that the website should be updated and maybe even redesigned. An expert, and the money, remain to be found.

No announcement was made regarding the next international conference.

For some context, one of the things CPTI members seem to value most about the organization is that it has “special consultative status” at the United Nations. Christophe Barbey is the representative at the UN who carries out whatever privileges this allows CPTI.

CPTI dissolved at its meeting in 2013 with the intention of reforming in another host nation under the same name. That, and the deaths of two board members, disrupted the already fraught group, and they’ve been struggling to find their footing ever since.

The group has only a tangential relationship with war tax resistance, though some of its members are war tax resisters. The group is mostly composed of representatives of various national “peace tax”-promoting groups, and it hopes to somehow convince some authority in the United Nations to declare that this form of conscientious objection to military taxation is a universal human right.

While I wasn’t paying attention, someone scanned in many back issues of Friends Bulletin, the journal of the Pacific Yearly Meeting and Pacific Coast Association of Friends. This has allowed me another window onto the state of American war tax resistance, Quaker war tax resistance in particular, in the last half of the 20^th century.

Here, for example, from the April, 1951 issue, is an article on an early Peacemakers tax refusal pledge that includes a complete list of signatories, including several I hadn’t heard of before:

Tax Refusal

On March 15 there were among those who did not pay their Federal income taxes the following 59 persons who joined together to support a statement distributed by the Tax Refusal Committee of Peacemakers, 2013 Fifth Ave., N.Y., N.Y. Reverend Ernest Bromley is chairman of this subcommittee of Peacemakers: A.J. Muste is secretary of Peacemakers. A part of their statement is: “Feeling that war must inevitably come unless something drastic is done by individuals to show their unwillingness to go along with war-making policies of their governments, we the undersigned state hereby that we are not going to pay our federal income taxes due March 15. For some of us this means that we will not pay that percentage which corresponds to the nation’s outlay for militarism; for others of us it means we will not pay even the first cent for the maintenance of a government whose main business is preparation for annihilation…”

The signers were: Ernest and Marion Bromley, Golay Rd., Gano, Sharonville, Ohio; Lindley and Emma Burton, Low Buildings, Bryn Mawr, Pa.; Horace and Ava Champney, 512 Phillips St., Yellow Springs, O.; Sara Chase, 1525 Sutter St., San Francisco, Calif.; Samuel and Clarissa Cooper, 214 Eastbourne Terr., Moorestown, N.J.; Dorothy DaPonte, Rte. 4, Box 374, Mobile, Ala.; Margaret E. Dungan, Wallingford, Penna.; Arthur Evans, Awbury, Penna.; Rebecca Winsor Evans, Radnor, Penna.; Fyke Farmer, Bellevue Dr., Nashville, Tenn.; Rev. Marion Frenyear, So. Hartford, N.Y.; Henry and Beatrice Dyer, Yellow Springs, O.; Walter Gormly, 412 N. 3^rd St., W., Mt. Vernon, Iowa; Konrad Halle, 76 Pinehurst Ave., New York 33, N.Y.

Gerald Haynes, R.R. No. 3, Freeport, Maine; Ammon Hennacy, Rte. 3, Box 227, Phoenix, Ariz.; Rev. George Houser, 21 Audubon Ave., New York 32, N.Y.; Woodbridge O. Johnson, Jr., 106 W. 3^rd St., Parkville, Mo.; Sandy Katz 232 W. 29^th St., New York 1, N.Y.; Ruth C. LaBarrer, 6 Nutt Ave., Uniontown, Pa.; Sarah B. Leeds, 28 E. Main St., Moorestown, N.J.; Walter and Emily Longstreth, 140 N. 15^th St., Philadelphia 2, Pa.; Mary Bacon Mason, 31 Pleasant St., Newton Center, Mass.; Rev. Maurice F. McCrackin, 1111 Dayton St., Cincinnati 14, O.; Mary S. McDowell, 555 Ocean Ave., Brooklyn 26, N.Y.; Rev. A.J. Muste, 21 Audubon Ave., New York 32, N.Y.; Ax Nelson, 501 Benvenue, Los Altos, Calif.; Wallace and Juanita Nelson, Golay Rd., in Gano, Sharonville, O.; Ray and Jean Olds, Yellow Springs, O.; Raymond F. Olds, Monterey, Mass.; Storrs F. Olds, Monterey Rd., Great Barrington, Mass.; Jim Otsuka, Rte. 1, Cloverdale, Mich.; Mrs. Gordon Parker, 1401 Wood Ave., Colorado Springs, Colo.; Mabel G. Parker, 1804 Wood Ave., Colorado Springs, Colo.;

James and Paula Peck, 552 Riverside Dr., New York, N.Y., Miriam Pennypacker, 6420 Drexel Rd., Philadelphia 31, Pa.; Grace Rhoads, Box 90, Moorestown, N.J.; Elizabeth and Edward C.M. Richards, Nur Mahal, R.D. 3, West Chester, Pa.; Francis and Valerie Riggs, 23 Coolidge Hill Rd., Cambridge 38, Mass.; Margaret Schauffler, 100 S. Cedar St., Oberlin, O.; Robert and Marjorie Swann, R. 1, Cloverdale, Mich.; Ralph and Lila Templin, Box 125, Yellow Springs, O.; Caroline F. Urie, 128 S. Walnut St., Yellow Springs, O.; Ellen Winsor, Radnor, Pa.; Abraham and Jean Zwickel, P.O. Box 232, Pismo Beach, Calif.

And here’s an early example of a plea for a “peace tax”-style accommodation for conscientious objectors to military taxation, from the January, 1951 issue:

Tax Petition

On Saturday, December 9, in Whittier, Calif., there was combined with the annual meeting of the southern California office of the Fellowship of Reconciliation a program sponsored by the Peace Board of California Yearly Meeting. One of the results of the day is the following petition:

To the Congress of the United States of America

We the undersigned citizens of the United States of America believe:

That present tensions between the free enterprise and communist group of nations are the result of reliance upon military force as an instrument of political determination;

That the threat or use of such force can never result in a just or mutually satisfactory resolution of these tensions;

That the labor and material expended in building up military might would have and still might lead to a peaceful and mutually satisfactory solution if used instead indiscriminately to rebuild the homes and industries destroyed in the last war.

We further believe:

That the military way violates the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” and the Golden Rule by which a Christian must live.

That to supply the means to induce of compel another to do that which we cannot do is equally a violation of those Commandments.

Therefore relying on our Constitutional Bill of Rights which our nation is this week honoring, and the Right of Petition thereby guaranteed, we humbly pray your august body that you pass legislation exempting all of like religious belief from income tax to be used in support of military establishment and substitute the use of that portion of our tax which is to our total tax as the amount used for military is to the national total, to that committee of the United Nations seeking a peaceful abatement of these tensions, thus giving the citizens of the United States the opportunity of paying taxes for the support of war or peace according to the dictates of their own conscience.

Here are some more tidbits I found in back issues of Friends Bulletin.

This one, from the June, 1948 issue, is an early example of the thaw in the long-forgotten Quaker war tax resistance tradition that began after World War Ⅱ:

Peace Testimony

Two concerned Friends, Bob Vogel and David Walden, who are members of the staff of the Southern California Branch of the AFSC have sent to all meetings in the Pacific Yearly Meeting the following suggested “advice” for implementing our ancient testimony against all wars in terms of current issues.

Friends are exhorted to adhere faithfully to our ancient testimony against all wars and fightings, and in no way unite with any warlike measure, either offensive or defensive, to the end that we may convincingly demonstrate a more excellent way of settling conflicts — the way of Christian love, goodwill, and service to all men.

A living concern having been expressed that Friends[’] practices be consistent with their professions, Friends are urged (1) not to register for any conscription measure nor accept any alternative service for conscientious objectors under a compulsory conscription law; (2) to avoid engaging in any trade or business profession promotive of war or profiting from war activity; (3) to avoid the purchase of government war bonds or stock certificates in war industries; (4) to refuse to pay taxes for war purposes, paying only that percentage of the tax which supports the civil aspects of government; (5) to educate and counsel their children against the use of military toys and books and the attendance or participation in military drills, organizations, parades, or demonstrations.

Friends are urged to live in that life and power that takes away the occasion for war, to give deep attention to the causes of war and conflict, and to support those efforts of mediation and reconciliation which are consistent with our principles gained through Divine guidance.

5/19/48

The October, 1949 edition gave this transcript of a portion of the trial of James Otsuka over his war tax resistance:

Four Dollars and Fifty Cents

On September 1^st Judge Robert Baltzell sentenced James Otsuka in Federal Court in Indianapolis to ninety days and a fine of $100. Otsuka, a member of Orange Grove Meeting (Pasadena), had refused to comply with an order given by Baltzell August 19 to pay to the government $4.50 in taxes which he owed, this being the amount of his taxes that he had determined from the Statemen’s Year Book and other sources would go to military purposes and which he had given instead to the American Friends Service Committee. He was represented by Earl Robbins, an attorney from Centerville, Indiana. An account of the dialogue heard in chambers where James Otsuka was sentenced indicated that Baltzell, who has been very rough with most c.o.’s appearing before him and rude to this defendant, was concerned with the issue. There follows a part of Carolyn Mallison’s report of the dialogue between Baltzell and Robbins, the attorney, after the defendant had been sentenced and taken away:

Judge:

Do you understand this, Robbins?

Robbins:

I think so, your Honor.

Judge:

I hope not! You are an American. I hope you cannot understand such actions.

Robbins:

I do not condone it myself your Honor, but I can understand it. It reminds me of the refusal of the early colonists to pay the Stamp Tax.

Judge:

You know what happened then. You wouldn’t want that to happen… I don’t see how you can represent him. It is a terrible thing for a young fellow to take all the advantages of living here and then refuse to pay his taxes.

Robbins:

Of course the tax law is different from Selective Service, for instance.

Judge:

In what way?

Robbins:

Selective Service does provide for alternative service for those who are conscientiously opposed to war, whereas the tax law gives no alternative.

Immediately after the U.S. Marshal had departed with Otsuka a group of his friends were invited by Judge Baltzell into his chambers for a consultation on the decision just handed down. Included in the group were Ernest Bromley (editor of News of Tax Refusal, from which this report is taken, Wilmington, Ohio), Lloyd Danzeison [sic] (Peacemaker, Yellow Springs, Ohio), Carfon Foltz, Mr. & Mrs. Glenn Mallison, Jean Olds, Perry Ostroff, Earl Robbins, Ralph Templin, and Caroline Urie. Here again the issue was raised as how one changes a bad law with Judge Baltzell indicating that his job was to judge by existing laws and he would continue to do so until the people through Congress created new laws.

This note, from the February, 1949 edition, gives us a peek into the publicity tactics in play at the launch of the Peacemakers movement:

Ernest R. Bromley (General Delivery, Wilmington, Ohio) writes: “The continuation committee of Peacemakers met in Chicago last week [early January]. Among the things discussed was a plan to get widespread publicity on the tax refusal business just prior to March 15. At present there are about 35 people ready to announce their stand of refusal (some for this year, but all for next year, 1949 I mean). I am writing, therefore, to several who have recently expressed considerable interest in the position in order to see if any of them are ready to join us and use our group as a medium for making their announcement, at least making it at that time.”

An article from the January, 1961 edition also gave some useful background on the “peace tax” law idea. This came in the form of a proposed model bill that was being sent around for review by the Pacific Yearly Meeting to its Monthly Meetings, in the hopes of coming to “a decision on whether not an attempt should be made to enact this concept into law.” The article says that the proposed bill was formulated in response to a presentation on the subject in 1959 by representatives of the Claremont Meeting at the Pacific Yearly Meeting that year.

The proposed legislation called itself the “Civilian Income Tax Act of 1961” and would have created a walled-off fund, governed by the Secretary of the Treasury, and destined “solely to UNICEF” that would receive federal income taxes from conscientious objectors who were willing to pay an extra 5% surtax for the privilege of not having to pay their taxes into the general fund and pay for military spending.

I also noted several mentions of Quakers discussing the idea of voluntarily taxing themselves a certain portion of their income to send to the United Nations as a way of promoting peace. This continued long after the United Nations formally ratified the Korean War, so seems a bit blinkered to me, but there was clearly a lot of wishful thinking about the United Nations that had persisted through earlier generations in the peace movement and their daydreams about an international legal order that would subdue the frightful anarchy between nations.

Another early “thaw” example, a rare one from Canada, is found in the May, 1954 edition:

Calgary Friends… have written the Minister of Finance regarding non-payment of the defense portion of income taxes.

The Quarterly Meeting encouraged Friends to take what ever stand seemed right to them on the tax question as their consciences dictate, and asked the Monthly Meetings to consider the concern of Calgary Friends.

The March, 1955 issue had this eloquent statement from Irwin Hogenauer:

Non-Payment of Taxes

A problem has been raised in a letter from Irvin [sic] Hogenauer (310 East 170 St., Seattle 55, Washington), which has for many years troubled Friends and members of other peace-making groups. It strikes at two basic testimonies of Friends: our conviction that war and preparation for war are contrary to the will of our Father, and our belief in the rightness of a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. In our observation, this problem has not been solved by any group of our Society to the satisfaction of all. Perhaps our Yearly Meeting, with its diverse, international background, would be able to add to the thinking of the Society and like-minded persons. The Bulletin would welcome comments; please keep them brief.

―Editor

“In the Adult Study Group of University Meeting,” writes Irwin Hogenauer, “we are using Jospehine Benton’s pamphlet John Woolman, Most Modern of Ancient Friends. In my further reading of The Basis of Quaker Political Concern, the speech by Henry J. Cadbury before the tenth anniversary dinner of the Friends Committee on National Legislation, Washington D.C., I came across another quotation from John Woolman: ‘I cannot form a concern, but when a concern comes I endeavor to be obedient.’…

[“]Farther on in the speech, Henry Cadbury quotes Woolman again: ‘To turn all the treasures we possess into channels of universal love becomes the business of our lives.’ Now I interpret the word ‘becomes’ two ways. First, I suppose, one would say that for Quakers this action of which he speaks ‘will be’ the business of our lives. But I also read that the right channeling of our treasures ‘is becoming to’ the business our our lives. And the present tense means now.

“I have been burdened with a concern for many years. I have not sought it out… Try as I will, especially at the behest of friends and relatives, I can not throw it off, or dodge it, or whatever one does with a concern…

“Mailings from the F.C.N.L. continually remind me… that defense is the primary fiscal consideration of the United States government. This means that the dollars we pay in income taxes are being spent largely for the military establishment, security measures, and related endeavours in the defense machinery.

“What has become of our peace testimony if we can allow the government to take our substance and put it to a use contrary to this testimony?… Who is there who refuses military service who would not also refuse to pay for a bullet, a rifle, an atom or hydrogen bomb?…

“Some say we can not keep from paying it. There are a number of ways if one would but investigate. A result may be imprisonment, but what period in history has not seen some Quakers in prisons?…

“It is also contended that so many federal taxes that go for war purposes are on goods and services that we buy daily. This may be true, but it should not automatically relieve us from thought and action on the tax which is levied directly and often withheld without consent of the earner. With Henry Thoreau, we can not follow the use made of the dollar after we spend it for groceries, telephone services, gasoline, or a railroad ticket. But does this relieve us of all responsibility in this area? In any case we can do something about a tax levied directly on our wage, salary, or other income.”

A letter to the editor the following month took up the call:

More on Taxes

To the Editor:

The Friends peace testimony that Friends cannot support or prepare for war, implies that one can not pay others to prepare for or engage in war. It is not true that one can’t avoid or refuse to pay federal income taxes. To keep one’s income below the tax level is the most practical course. I think — having done so for the last 5 years. A change in employment may be necessary, but can a Friend properly hold a job that causes him to compromise with his testimonies?

If we follow the Richmond Statement, 1950, “Conscientious objection must be complemented by conscientious projection of God’s spirit into affirmative action,” we will be involved in so much volunteer activity for peace that we won’t have time enough for money-making jobs to have a taxable income. The important thing is to do all one is able for peace…

John Affolter
4004 13^th Ave., South
Seattle 8, Washington

(In another letter in the same issue, the writer said that tax resisters could expect to have their bank accounts seized unless “you have no job, raise your own food, and resort to primitive barter… a cumbersome way of moving towards non-participation in the war establishment.” The writer suggested instead that concerned people “influence our legislators” in some unspecified way.)

Here are a few more items concerning tax resistance that I found in back issues from the 1980s of Friends Bulletin, the journal of the Pacific Yearly Meeting of Quakers.

The March 1980 issue included an announcement from the Orange County Monthly Meeting of the launch of “The Conscience and Military Tax Resolution.” This sort of thing is frequently proposed in modern war tax resistance circles, but has yet to show much success. In this incarnation people who “are not ready to resist now” could sign on to the resolution to “show that you are at least ready to begin when 100,000 others agree to do so.” Once that target was reached, signers of the Resolution would begin to refuse to pay at least a certain percentage of their taxes. The goal of this was to pressure the government into passing “the World Peace Tax Fund Bill or similar legislation which would provide a legal alternative for taxpayers morally opposed to war.”

The November 1980 issue had several items on war tax resistance, beginning with this statement and commentary:

A Refusal to Cooperate with War

We express our love for God and all the peoples of this earth. A vital act of this love is to refuse cooperation with registration for the draft and payment of our tax money for war. We testify against rendering unto Caesar that which is God’s. We, the individuals who serve on the Pacific Yearly Meeting Peace Committee, join with those Friends who refuse to cooperate with war taxes and registration. As a result of this call, we have chosen to protest war taxes, some refusing at least a “Token Ten” dollars.

Friend — what canst thou say?

Lonnie Valentine
Betsy Eberhart
Gladis Innerst
Mike Turner
Ellen Lyon
Duane Magill
Franklin Zahn
Ed Flowers
Bonnie Wells

The above statement, written by the Pacific Yearly Meeting Peace Committee and others came with labor over several minutes on conscription and peace from monthly meetings as well as Friends General Conference July 4, 1980 minute, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s statement, and Sarasota Monthly Meeting’s Statement of Peace. The intent was a minute of action in which our Peace Testimony would be not just words but applied to our lives in 1980.

Two suggestions came out of a subsequent threshing session: 1) that the statement be made available for others to sign and 2) that the Peace Committee be available to labor with monthly meetings on this statement.

All monthly meetings have previously received Franklin Zahn’s “War Taxes–Minus a Token Ten” of August 1979 which develops the idea and makes suggestions on alternative uses of the token ten dollars. In essence, withholding $10.00 in objection to the federal government’s use of our tax money for war is similar to withholding the U.S. Tax from telephone bills which was done during the Vietnam War.

I am raising the question within monthly meetings and among Peace Committee members whether PYM Peace Committee should sponsor a weekend conference at Quaker Center. Your suggestions and/or responses would be appreciated.

Also, I hope that monthly meetings, meanwhile, are taking advantage of Lonnie Valentine’s availability to provide workshops on War Tax Objection.

In peace and love,
Ellen Lyon, Clerk
PYM Peace Committee

Lonnie Valentine also penned a separate article on “War Tax Objection” for that issue:

How can we who are above the draft age support Friends faced with registration? In Our Peace Testimony it says:

Our witness to the way of peace requires that we refuse military service of any kind, and challenges us to consider whether we can in any way submit to that involuntary servitude which is conscription. Friends should work to abolish state conscription — whether for military or other purposes — and should refuse personally to cooperate with the draft.

Since many of us do not have this opportunity to refuse to register for the draft, we must look to those other ways in which we can refuse cooperation with the draft.

One way is refusing registration of our money for war through the taxation system. When we willingly submit a tax form, we are supporting registration for the draft; when we willingly pay taxes of which over half is used for war, we are supporting registration for the draft. When we do these things, we are withdrawing support from Friends who are refusing to register for the draft. Therefore, one unequivocal way we who are above draft age can support Friends resisting the draft is to resist payment of those taxes which, in part, go for registration and conscription.

If we recognize our “involvement in militarism through the payment of taxes used for military purposes” but do not act to end such involvement, then are we not hypocritical to tell Friends faced with registration to refuse military service? If draft age Friends take the Peace Testimony to heart and refuse to cooperate with the draft, then is it not time that we who are no longer of that age refuse to cooperate with the drafting of our money for war?

Perhaps our Peace Testimony states what we believe too rigidly when it calls on Friends to refuse cooperation with the draft. Perhaps, however, the testimony does not state what we believe with regard to the payment of war taxes strongly enough. If we agree that we should refuse cooperation with the draft, then it is time we should refuse cooperation with war taxes.

That issue also included this on-point notice from one Quarterly Meeting:

College Park Quarterly Meeting Minute of Support for Non-Registrants and War Tax Refusers

In these times of draft registration and military buildup, many persons may be led to actions in harmony with the Quaker Peace Testimony. College Park Quarterly Meeting supports those who feel spiritually led, for reasons of conscience, to perform such actions, including non-registration for the draft and war tax refusal.

October 19, 1980

A letter to the editor from Walter Klein in that issue suggested that Quakers, instead of resisting war taxes, should pay twice their normal tax, but pay the extra amount for a non-military purpose, perhaps one chosen as a group. “It would be legal, it would be a statement of conscience, wars and armament would continue; but the message might be loud and clear and perhaps more effective.” He suggested the program be called “ ‘The Better Use of Government’ Fund or ‘BUG’ Fund for short.”

Lonnie Valentine reminded Quakers of their historical tradition of war tax resistance in the March 1981 issue:

Saying “NO!” to Taxation for Draft Registration

by Lonnie Valentine, Orange County Meeting

A.J. Muste once remarked that “The two decisive powers of the government with respect to war are the power to conscript and the power to tax.” Now it can be claimed that the government’s ability to wage war depends decisively upon its power to tax. After all, our nuclear age began beneath one airplane, twelve men, and millions of drafted tax dollars.

As early as 1755 American Friends recognized the connection between taxes and war. In an epistle to Pennsylvania Friends, John Woolman, John Churchman, and others wrote:

As we cannot be concerned with wars and fighting, so neither ought we to contribute thereto… though some part of the money be raised… is said to be for such benevolent purposes, as supporting our friendship with our Indian neighbors, and relieving the distresses of our fellow-subjects… we could most cheerfully contribute to those purposes, if they were not so mixed, that we cannot in the manner proposed, show our hearty concurrence therewith, without at the same time assenting to… practices, which we apprehend contrary to the testimony which the Lord hath given us to bear…

Indeed, the Friends’ clear apprehension of the connection of money and war was reflected in the Constitutional debates (about whether to include a conscientious objector amendment) with regard to the conscription of men and money. Roger Sherman of Connecticut remarked that “It is well know that those who are religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, are equally scrupulous of getting substitutes or paying an equivalent. Many of them would rather die then do either one or the other.” How much are we now ready to do for our scruples about conscription?

If we were all to be subject to the military draft in the next war, we would not pay a fee to hire someone in our place. However, we seem to have forgotten that with the payment of taxes we are hiring substitutes. We are paying to have someone go in our place. In being unable to say “No!” to the payment of taxes used to register and conscript others, we nullify our ability to say “No!” in other ways. After all, the government cares little if we leaflet post offices, learn draft counseling, or even advocate draft resistance as long as we continue to pay our taxes. Simply put, when we pay our taxes, we enable the government to conscript.

If other Friends are concerned enough about conscription to contemplate saying “No!” to the drafting of our tax dollars, please write me at 27122 Cipres, Mission Viejo, CA 92692 to let me know [sic] about the many ways we can protest and resist paying war taxes. Also, please feel free to ask those Friendly questions about justifying suffering for such a witness!

Joshua Evans reflected my feelings long ago when he said: “I found it best for me to refuse paying demands on my estate which went to paying the expenses of war, and although my part might appear at best a drop in the ocean, yet the ocean, I considered, was made of many drops.” Are there other Friends who are willing to be drops in this ocean?

[Lonnie Valentine has travelled in the ministry among Friends in Pacific Yearly Meeting this past year under the auspices of the Fund for Concerns to share with Friends his concerns about paying taxes for war.]

A letter from Harold Waterhouse in the same issue warned Quakers against making their war tax resistance “an act so private in nature that sometimes its sole impact falls on some harassed IRS clerk [and, a]s an act of witness… is chiefly between us and God.” While such an act “relieves our conscience… if it reduces our drive for peace to the point that we fail to act in more effective ways, then war-tax-withholding, on balance, is counter-productive.”

A letter from David & Janet Hartsough to the IRS, reprinted in the May 1981 issue, explained why the Hartsoughs were refusing outright to pay $10.40 of their federal taxes (redirecting that to the Oakland Catholic Worker “to feed the hungry and house the homeless”), and paying the remaining $747.60 but in the form of a check made out to the Department of Health and Human Services instead of to the U.S. Treasury, in the hopes of thereby keeping the money out of the hands of the Defense Department.

A letter from Elinor Gene Hoffman to the IRS, reprinted in the June 1981 issue, explained why she was withholding 33⅓% of her taxes (“approximately the amount we are spending for future wars and present armaments”), redirecting them “to organizations I believe are dedicated to peace and to furthering life on this planet,” and declaring this on her tax return as a “Quaker Peace Witness” tax credit. She wrote, in part:

Please observe that by withholding only one-third of my taxes, I demonstrate my willingness to pay for past wars and veterans’ benefits. I believe we should honor past debts and that veterans of all wars should receive our cherishing care.…

I take this stand in full recognition of the many benefits we all derive from our representative form of government and the freedoms it enables me to enjoy. But I firmly believe nothing good my government has done or will do can endure if we do not halt our military pollution of the planet.

The January 1982 issue included a special section on “Conscientious War Tax Refusal”:

• A reprinted letter from DeAnne Butterfield and John Huyler, Jr. of Boulder Meeting to the IRS explained why they were withholding 39% of their taxes and declaring a credit in a similar manner to Hoffman’s action explained above. Excerpt:

  We hope most fervently that legal options (such as the proposed World Peace Tax Fund) may be available in the future and would gladly pay into such a fund. Until then we see war tax refusal as the only avenue which allows us to follow our religious principles.

  We welcome your scrutiny of this return. You will find that we have been forthright and complete to the best of our ability. Furthermore, we hope that this commitment on our parts can be a useful catalyst for dialogue. We will welcome you our your agents into our home in hopes that, together, in a spirit of mutual concern and respect, we may discover better ways to bring about an end to all wars.

  A note appended to this letter added: “Through the efforts of DeAnne Butterfield, John Huyler, and others, Boulder Meeting adopted a one-year trial program of reducing war taxes and diverting them to peaceful uses through hiring a part-time Peace Secretary who will help stimulate activity in the Meeting and in the community.” (See ♇ 7 June 2018 for more information about this.)
• A reprinted letter from Gerald Morsello of Eugene Meeting to the IRS explained his tax refusal, which involved redirecting “a portion of my Federal Income Tax” to “the Oregon Urban Rural Credit Union for use by people most affected by recent Federal domestic budget cuts.” He said he was doing this although he would prefer “to be able to place the money I owe the Federal government in a legally recognized alternative, such as the World Peace Tax Fund.”
• An letter from Constance Jolly of the Berkeley Meeting to the IRS, excerpted from the newsletter of the National Council for a World Peace Tax Fund, explained her redirection of 35% of her taxes to “an organization that works for peaceful reconciliation, for human rights, and for disarmament.” Excerpt:

  I am not one who breaks the law lightly, but for me the law that commands its citizens to do evil is less binding than the higher law that commands that “Thou shalt not kill.”

• An announcement for an upcoming conference on “A Religious Response to Growing Militarism” sponsored by College Park Quarterly Meeting said that it “will be a nurturing and supportive gathering for those Friends and others who are facing issues related to draft and tax resistance, [etc.]”
• A note read:

  The 1981 Tax Resistance issue of Newsletter is available (40¢ each) from 331 17^th Ave. E., Seattle WA 94112. Contents include information about forms of tax resistance or refusal, possible penalties, resources for decision-making, a national listing of counselors, Centers, and Alternative Funds.

  Those contents sound like the sort of stuff NWTRCC puts out nowadays. But NWTRCC wasn’t founded until 1982, so I don’t know who was putting out such a newsletter in 1981.
• An article concerning statements by Episcopalian and Catholic bishops on nuclear weapons included this section:

  [I]n June Archbishop Raymond G. Hunthausen of Seattle proposed that “a sizable number of people in the state” undertake a taxpayers revolt to protest the buildup in nuclear arms. He argued that refusing to pay fifty per cent of income taxes “in resistance to nuclear murder and suicide” would be “a definite step toward total disarmament… Our paralyzed political process needs that catalyst of nonviolent action based on faith. We have to refuse to give incense — in our day tax dollars — to our nuclear idol.”

• Brief summaries of the activities of various meetings included such notices as these:
  • “Conscience and Military Tax Campaign [and] Consequences of Tax Refusal” were among topics on the agenda of University Meeting’s “study hour.”
  • “Eugene friends held a threshing session on tax resistance: ‘No consensus was sought, and the Meeting was clearly divided on this difficult issue.’ ”
  • “Conscription of Taxes” was discussed by the Phoenix Meeting in the context of “discussions growing out of the New Call to Peacemaking statement.”

Finally, the April 1986 issue included a report from Anne Friend of the Santa Monica Meeting on The Friends Committee on War Tax Concerns:

The Friends Committee on War Tax Concerns is well on the way to working itself out of a job. The committee was established early in 1985 to accomplish three tasks: (1) to publish a guidebook on war tax concerns; (2) to encourage consultation on war tax issues throughout the Society of Friends; and (3) to develop queries and advices for Quaker employers.

The proposed guidebook has become a series of pamphlets and a bibliography. Three of the pamphlets, the ones on Quaker history and recent statements of Friends, on the Biblical basis for conscientious objection to war taxes, and on the spiritual and rational bases for war tax concerns, should be in print by April 15, along with the bibliography.

In mid-continent and mid-October there will be a conference for employers. Invitations will be sent to schools and religious organizations operated by all the groups participating in the New Call to Peacemaking. About 100 people are expected to gather and explore the positions that can be adopted vis à vis the Internal Revenue Service and the range of possible solutions to problems which may arise.

Two regional conferences, “Money and Conscience” and “Paying for War/Paying for Peace,” were held in 1985. Both were very successful. Several more are planned for 1986. FCWTC will provide resource material and assistance with program planning for conferences wherever there are Friends who recognize the importance of war tax issues and are willing to do the basic planning and arrangements. I hope this means some of us.

Each of us on the committee represents a different Friends organization. Most of us refuse to pay some or all of the taxes that pay for war. However, the committee is concerned with “concerns,” not just resistance. We believe that all Friends should go as far as they can, but not all are called to go in the same direction. What aspect of this explosive issue do you most want to learn more about, discuss with other Friends, make the subject of a conference? If you can’t give time, can you give money? The basic program of the committee is to prepare resource materials, distribute them where they are needed, help people with similar problems and concerns to get in touch with each other and then to lay the committee down, probably about a year from now.

I will try to get to any meeting in Southern California (maybe further) and hope to get to Intermountain Yearly Meeting in June (Anne Friend, 836 N. Beaudry, № 5, Los Angeles, CA 90012). Lon Fendall at the Center for Peace Learning, Newberg, OR 97132, is willing to visit some meetings in North Pacific Yearly Meeting, as way opens, and/or to help plan a conference. Linda Coffin is the staff at FCWTC, P.O. Box 6441, Washington, D.C. 20009. Any of us would like to hear from you.

If April 15 is getting to you more every year, think about what you can do about it. And while you’re thinking about it, do something to get others thinking about it, too.

This is the twenty-first in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was reported in back issues of The Mennonite. Today brings us up to 1974.

The opening day of 1974 brought readers the news that “The World Peace Tax Fund Act” had been introduced in Congress. This early version of the “peace tax fund” idea, according to the article, would create a federal trust fund separate from the funds in the general U.S. treasury, which would be supervised by a board of trustees (mostly appointed by the U.S. president). The fund might be used to support such things as (the language in the bill said “shall include but not be limited to”) “research and other activities designed to develop and demonstrate nonviolent methods of resolving international conflicts.” Registered conscientious objectors to military taxation would have a portion of their taxes assigned to this fund (a portion equivalent to the percent of the U.S. budget spent on military purposes in the previous year) in a way that would ostensibly give them “rights… comparable to First Amendment rights given to draftees who are conscientious objectors.”

“The bill,” the article explains with a straight face, “prohibits using the Peace Fund as a means of reducing regular appropriations for nonmilitary purposes.” In other words, if the trustees of the peace tax fund decide to grant the money to the Peace Corps, Congress is not supposed to then cut the appropriation it gave to the Peace Corps out of the general treasury. How this was supposed to be enforced is anyone’s guess.

This is the modern version of the phony “Civilian Bonds” from World War Ⅱ (see ♇ 9, 10, & 11 July 2018). It would allow “conscientious” people to avoid the risks of resistance and to get official government recognition of how conscientious they are without actually affecting one whit their complicity in what the government does with their money.

Sadly, one of the stories the archive of The Mennonite tells is how the drive to pass some sort of “peace tax fund” legislation like this came to displace actual war tax resistance — even as the proposed bills themselves became more and more watered down and got further and further from being taken seriously in Congress (the current version, doggedly introduced to each Congress by Representative John Lewis, has no cosponsors). I won’t be commenting on all of the individual mentions of these bills as they come up in this and subsequent issues of The Mennonite, as I consider it tangential to conscientious tax resistance (at best; antagonistic at worst), but there will be many such mentions, and by the end of my survey, they will outnumber mentions of real war tax resistance.

Taking off my rant hat…

The 15 January 1974 edition reprinted much of a letter from James Klassen, who was doing relief work in Vietnam, to his pastor, Ronald Krehbiel, telling about the torture of prisoners by South Vietnamese police. Editor Larry Kehler comments at the end of the letter: “The telephone company in Wichita called our house the other day to ask if we wanted to start paying our federal excise tax again ‘now that the war is over.’ We declined.”

The 5 February 1974 edition told of a triumph in the AFSC’s suit attempting to retrieve money it had withheld from the paychecks of its conscientiously objecting employees. A District Court had ordered the Internal Revenue Service to stop collecting the full taxes for those employees “because such withholding violates the free exercise of their religion as members of the Society of Friends” and to refund previously-collected amounts that represent “overpayment of taxes withheld.”

The triumph would be short-lived. (See ♇ 15 July 2013 for more about the suit and how it progressed.) When the Supreme Court voted, with one notable dissent, to reverse the district court’s decision, the news was covered in the 26 November 1974 edition.

As noted in the last episode, the Faith Mennonite Church in Minneapolis had decided to stop paying its telephone tax as a congregation. Alas, as the 30 April 1974 edition noted, the IRS successfully seized the $1.64 from the church’s bank account.

One possibly beneficial, though indirect, effect of the publicity about the peace tax fund act, I must admit, was that it seems to have inspired a Japanese Christian, Michio Ohno, to spark war tax resistance in Japan. A letter from Ohno, dated 22 April 1974 says that upon reading about the bill, he “at once wrote a letter to the editor of Asahi shimbun, the most influential daily paper in Japan, and it was printed in the March 20 issue of the paper.”

In the letter, I stated (1) I do not want to pay my income tax to be used for military purpose out of money God has entrusted me, (2) I will gladly pay the tax if nonmilitary use is secured, and (3) I proposed to have an act like the World Peace Tax Fund Act in the United States.

A few days later, Professor Masahito Ara commented favorably about my letter in his Newspapers in review on the NHK Radio. Dr. Sakakibara, who energetically writes books about Anabaptism, proposed an “alternative tax” system in the Anabaptist genealogy of conscientious objection, which is now at the press.

We are preparing to make a group looking for a possibility of having a law enabling us to pay tax whose use is restricted to nonmilitary purposes. We need your prayer and spiritual support.

But while this letter seemed to place all of the emphasis on a “peace tax fund”-style bill, the movement that Ohno started would instead focus on actual war tax resistance. Here’s an article that appeared in the 18 February 1975 edition:

Tax resistance group in Japan gains support

A war tax resistance movement is beginning in Japan.

Started by Michio Ohno, a pastor of the United Church of Christ in Japan who attended Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries in Elkhart, Indiana, in 1962–65, an organization for “Conscientious Objection to Military Tax” was formed November 23 in Tokyo. About sixty people attended the first meeting, and a “general assembly” was planned January 15 at the Shinanomachi Church in Tokyo.

The objectives of the organization are (1) reduction and eventual abolition of Japan’s Self-Defense Force (Japan’s constitution prohibits a military) and (2) encouraging nonpayment of the 6.4 percent of income taxes that support the Self-Defense Force.

Mr. Ohno, who is now working with Mennonites and Brethren in the Tokyo area, started the movement out of his religious convictions. But support has now grown beyond Mennonites, the Society of Friends, and the Fellowship of Reconciliation to include other Japanese citizens who question the constitutionality of the Self-Defense Force.

At the organizational meeting, speakers included Gan Sakakibara, principal of the Tokyo English Center, on “The historical development of conscientious objection” Yasusaburo Hoshino, professor at the Tokyo University of Liberal Arts, on “How to live nonviolently; A theory of peaceful tax paying”; and Shizuo Ito, a lawyer who sued the government for having unconstitutional armed forces, on “Struggle for peace.”

Mr. Ohno called Conscientious Objection to Military Tax the first organized movement of this kind in Japan.

“The time was ripe when we started the campaign,” he said. “We consulted several scholars of the constitution, and one of the professors said he himself had wanted to start a movement like this. Somebody else may well have started a movement like this anyway, even if we did not. We should not just sit back and wait for the peace to come, but be the peacemakers.”

Mr. Ohno said one of the decisive factors in his becoming involved in conscientious tax objection in March 1974 was an article in The Mennonite last year on the proposed World Peace Tax Fund legislation in the United States.

The Mennonite General Conference met for its triennial sessions in August 1974, and 1,300 delegates passed several resolutions. One was:

War taxes

Be it resolved that we educate ourselves more fully regarding the pervasive militarism of our society and express ourselves more strongly, advocating a reordering of priorities toward peacemaking;

• That we encourage congregations to study the World Peace Tax Fund Act (U.S.), considering the possibility of supporting it;
• That we… ask all General Conference members to question prayerfully whether they want to pay war taxes voluntarily;
• That the General Conference offices seriously work at the possibility of providing each employee with the option of following his/her conscience in the payment of war taxes; and
• That the Commission on Home Ministries give greater priority to this issue, including the creation of a special fund to be used for education, for assistance to those conscientiously refusing payment of war taxes, and for legal expenses, and that each person committed to war tax resistance pledge a regular contribution to this fund.

(Compare this to a resolution passed by the Central District Conference earlier in the year which endorsed the World Peace Tax Fund Act and asked its member churches to help get it passed but said nothing about war tax resistance or support for resisters.)

I took these brief excerpts from a later report on the triennial sessions:

“The struggles within the church, both individually and as a people, to relate to war taxes, amnesty, and serious economic questioning spoke of life to me. I came away grateful to be part of this people.” ―Dorsy Hill

World poverty and hunger, western affluence, the meaning in the twentieth century of the Bible’s teaching on the Year of Jubilee, life-style, ordination, amnesty, war taxes, mission expansion, church planting, and international relations were among the issues raised.

The meeting [a panel discussion that advocated simple living on Saturday] ended with tears, prayers, and other verbal responses after Ladon Sheats’ plea for Mennonites to turn away from wealth and the payment of war taxes.

The Sunday morning service was punctuated by an unscheduled dramatic presentation, initiated by Ladon Sheats.

Three persons wearing signs saying, “Fear,” “Security,” and “Tradition,” came to the front of the gymnasium during one of the first hymns and told a “third world” person, “We cannot help you.” They remained at the front until almost the end of the service, when they left saying, “Our forefathers said no but we don’t. We pay over $4 billion in war taxes. We can’t help you. Please forgive us. May God help you.”

A letter from Arnold Claasen, dated 16 August 1974 complained that not enough time was given to discuss the various resolutions at the triennial. “Specifically with reference to ‘war tax’ resolution, there was considerable discussion, and the chair found it necessary to terminate the discussion, with good reason.” In his own case, while he did not care to see so much of his taxes go to the military, and he would not serve in the military, he felt that this did not relieve him from the responsibility to pay his taxes. He recommended instead that Mennonites rededicate themselves to charitable giving, in part as a legal war tax resistance technique.

Generosity and charity and self-sacrifice — “Jubilee living” — were also the theme of a letter from John Swarr dated 14 November 1974. Excerpt:

Once again war is brought to mind, now in its new form of refusing food to the hungry or assistance to the poor and struggling peoples. But the U.S. Government continues to send money and give military training and materials to many repressive governments, and we continue to pay the taxes it uses to finance this evil, in Brazil, Chile, South Korea, South Vietnam, and on and on. Stop! Jubilee living proclaims Jesus is Lord! Neither Caesar nor Uncle Sam is lord, so we must resist this evil and channel money to the General Conference War Tax Alternative Fund instead. I enclose some refused tax money for the fund and trust you will see that it gets to the right place.

The Commission on Home Ministries of the General Conference Mennonite Church, having been given a mandate at the triennial, established a “war tax alternative fund.” Here’s how the 8 October 1974 edition described it:

The fund, to be outside the budget, will be used for education about war tax resistance, assistance to those who are resisting taxes, and legal expenses of individuals or agencies involved in tax resistance.

The commission’s peace and social concerns committee took action in September to establish the fund and to invite persons who have a commitment to war tax resistance to contribute to the fund on a regular basis.

In addition, persons who have resisted war taxes or who are concerned about the issue are encouraged to share their experiences with the commission or to request resources on the war tax issue, according to Harold Regier, CHM peace and social concerns secretary.

Peter Ediger, a member of the peace and social concerns committee and pastor of the Arvada (Colorado) Mennonite Church, will coordinate work on the war tax issue and possibly edit a war tax newsletter to keep concerned people in touch with each other.

That same edition carried this news:

U.S. sues diocese in war tax protest

The Justice Department has brought suit against the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania to collect $1,006 in federal income taxes withheld by David M. Gracie.

Mr. Gracie, rector of the Free Church of St. John in Kensington, a working-class neighborhood in Philadelphia, withheld 50 percent of his income tax for the past five years because of the continuing American involvement in Vietnam. He claims that “another 50,000 will die this year courtesy of the United States of America.”

In response to the suit, the diocesan council let stand its recent decision “that each of our employees has the right to exercise his conscience in respect to the withholding of payment of taxes as a means of protest” and that the legal council of the diocese will contest the government move to collect money from the diocese.

From Fellowship magazine.

This is the thirty-third in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was reported in back issues of Gospel Herald, journal of the (Old) Mennonite Church.

By 1993 things had slowed to a crawl. It was only a few years back that talk of war tax resistance had risen to a frenzy, and the subject was a regular topic of debate in the Mennonite Church General Assembly. Now: not so much.

The annual “Taxes for Peace” redirection fund update appeared in the 23 March 1993 issue:

Peace fund gifts welcomed.

Mennonite Central Committee U.S. Peace and Justice Ministries invites contributions for the 1993 Taxes for Peace fund. The fund, established in 1972, gives people who withhold war taxes a way to give their money to peaceful purposes. Contributions will support the creation of peace education materials and education about pastoral sexual misconduct by the Women’s Concerns desk and Mennonite Conciliation Services.

Remnants of the old passion were preserved on videotape (30 March 1993):

Videos about war taxes available from Mennonite Central Committee. In “Paying for Peace,” war tax resisters share why they resist paying war taxes and the impact of that decision on their lives. “Compelled by Conscience” explains how the Peace Tax Fund would allow people to designate the portion of their federal taxes used for war to a fund for peacemaking programs. Contact MCC…

A historical study of Mennonites and war taxes was released (28 December 1993):

MCC occasional paper, “Silence and Courage: Income Taxes, War and Mennonites, 1940–1993,” by Titus Peachey, explores the connection between income taxes and war in both U.S. and Canadian history, with particular emphasis on the World War Ⅱ period. This is the 18^th in the Mennonite Central Committee Occasional Papers series. Available from MCC…

That’s it for 1993. I racked my brain for more possible explanations for the sudden fall-off of war tax resistance content in this period.

One possibility I didn’t consider before is that perhaps those who promoted war tax resistance were at first an easy-to-ignore minority, but when they began to organize and exert influence this prompted “the silent majority” (or perhaps just a more-influential or more-politically-skillful minority) who were against war tax resistance to begin to organize and throw their weight around too. Once that group finally got organized and active, the war tax resisters lost the advantage they had gained by being the first movers on the issue and ended up getting thwarted.

I’m not convinced that’s the answer, but it’s another possibility, or maybe part of the answer.

Magical and wishful thinking might also be a partial explanation for the decline. There’s the Peace Tax Fund scheme, which has its own fantastic ideas associated with it, and then there’s something like this “dream” Nancy Brubaker shared in the 4 January 1994 issue:

The U.S. government has sent Internal Revenue Service investigators to find out why so many people no longer owe any military taxes. The Mennonites explain to the IRS about the fund they have created with the money they are saving by living more simply. This money, they say, is to be used, not to defend the United States against other nations, but to defend Mother Earth against human beings. Already the money is being used to save endangered species of whales, to educate people on the dangers of plastic, and to teach Christians how to put on more sweaters when it is cold.

This announcement could be found in the 1 February 1994 issue:

Grants available.

The Heartland Peace Tax Fund is offering grants of up to $500 (U.S.) to local service agencies or to individuals. It invites application from organizations or individuals who serve underprivileged people (especially those underserved by governmental agencies), and from those who work for non-violence and for community and environmental improvement. Application deadline is March 1. To receive an application, send a self-addressed stamped envelope to Newton [Kansas] Area Peace Center…

I thought the follow-up report (10 May 1994) contained a noteworthy example of reinforced helplessness. Note that the article is describing a ceremony in which war tax resisters redirected taxes to charitable causes right there and then but then the article goes on to say that this is a demonstration of “what a national peace tax fund could do if passed by Congress” (emphasis mine):

Peace fund grants given.

Three Heartland Peace Tax Fund grants of $250 each have been awarded by the Newton (Kan.) Area Peace Center. The recipients are the Domestic Violence/Sexual Assault Association of Harvey County, Offender Victim Ministries (both of Newton), and the Samaritan Counseling Center of Hutchinson. The Heartland Peace Tax Fund was instituted a year ago; these are its first grants. They demonstrate locally what a national peace tax fund could do if passed by Congress — allow people conscientiously opposed to war to direct their tax dollars to meeting human need, says Susan Balzer, Hesston, who chairs the Peace Tax Group (a focus group of the Newton Area Peace Center).

Donald B. Kraybill and Leo Driedger co-wrote an article that appeared in part in the 12 April 1994 issue, on Mennonites and “peace”, that gave the lay of the landscape:

Peacemaking sounds like a natural, noble expression of the gospel which Christians of many stripes will applaud. But its modern ring may have more to do with assuring social and ecumenical acceptance than with a willingness to make a costly and distinctive witness for the gospel. Many Christians may be willing to extol the virtues of peacemaking, but few are willing to sit in jail for refusing to pay taxes for warfare.

In the 14 June 1994 issue, Jane Yoder-Short invented a dialog in the style of the Mennonite classic Martyrs Mirror. Excerpt:

Friend Ira Hess:

You need to be more supportive of the laws of this great nation. We can’t accept people making selective payment of taxes. You should be happy to pay for your defense.

Minnie Knight:

I give to God what is God’s. My loyalty belongs to the Lord. I want no one killed in my name.

The Clinton administration was pushing a health industry overhaul at this point, and there was lots of buzz about the possibility of “taxpayer-funded abortions,” and so that and war tax resistance got tangled up in each other in a couple of letters to the editor:

“Fellowship of Concerned Mennonites” (30 August 1994 )

It is more than passing strange that Mennonite leadership has favored withholding taxes for the military but now supports a health care program which may pay for the murdering of pre-born babies. If we are opposed to this abominable aspect of the Clinton health plan, why not say so in no uncertain terms?

Lawrence Burkhholder (21 February 1995)

This took the point of view of a Canadian looking over the proposed U.S. health industry law:

Yes, I do resent seeing my tax dollars help pay for abortions. However, if the criterion is that we should avoid paying taxes which fund death, then all of us on both sides of the border must stop paying military taxes immediately.

This is the thirty-sixth and last in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was reported in back issues of Gospel Herald, journal of the (Old) Mennonite Church.

Today I’m going to try to sum up what we’ve learned along the way. (Similar disclaimers apply to those I mentioned when I did this exercise for back issues of The Mennonite.)

First, the background: the (Old) Mennonite Church was a major Mennonite branch in the United States and Canada, distinct from the General Conference Mennonite Church (whose house organ, The Mennonite, I went over with a fine-toothed comb earlier this year), and from other Mennonite, Amish, and Brethren groups. It has roots in America that go back into the late 17^th century, but began to coalesce as a distinct organization in the late 18^th century.

The original publication of this Church was called The Herald of Truth. Another publication, Gospel Witness, began publishing in 1905, and the two merged into Gospel Herald in 1908. At least in the early years, editors of these magazines had a great deal of authority in shaping and reinforcing Mennonite doctrine.

1864–65

The Herald of Truth began publishing in the middle of the American Civil War. This is helpful for us, as it is during war time that Mennonite doctrine about abetting war and bloodshed is most likely to come to the forefront and be made explicit.

As best as I can determine, the orthodox Mennonite practice during the American Civil War was neither to serve in the military nor to purchase a substitute to serve in one’s place if one were drafted, but instead, to take advantage of the (Northern) government’s policy that allowed draftees to be exempt from service on the payment of a $500 “commutation fee.” Mennonite congregations were urged to organize fund drives among their membership to pay the commutation fees of Mennonite draftees who could not themselves afford such a sum.

This policy is in contrast to that of the Quakers, who discouraged members from paying such commutation fees and instead counseled them to refuse military service outright and accept the consequences. (Some Quakers did exactly that, though others bucked the orthodoxy to serve in non-combatant roles or pay the fees.)

Mennonites were also discouraged from raising money to use as encouragement for non-Mennonites in their area to enlist (a technique meant to cause the local enlistment quota to be met and thereby stop the government from drafting others). This was considered to be too close to “hiring substitutes” and therefore also forbidden.

1866–1900

Those stands formed the baseline from which Mennonite war tax resistance would later develop. But at the time, it was accepted as a given that Mennonites should pay all of their taxes without question or complaint. Indeed this was often put forward as one of the reasons why governments should tolerate Mennonite conscientious objection to military service — after all, they’re good taxpayers.

This doctrine was supported by the “two kingdoms” interpretation of the Render-unto-Caesar episode and the thirteenth chapter of Paul’s letters to the Romans. In that interpretation, Christians were to be primarily loyal to the Kingdom of God, but were to mostly leave worldly kingdoms to do their own thing. The kingdoms of the world were not meant to be reformed or to become Christian exemplars; instead, they were meant to wield the sword in a good old fashioned, eye-for-an-eye sort of way. Christians could and should pay their taxes to such governments without blinking an eye, as the governments had every right to exact tribute on their terms from their subjects, and what they did with the money afterwards was their own problem, not that of the Christian taxpayers.

For this reason, for instance, many Mennonites would not vote — thinking it not to be their concern to try to direct the government in any way.

1901–1916

While I never saw any articles in the Mennonite Church magazines at this time promoting tax resistance, I did notice that some of the articles promoting taxpaying seemed to be doing so with an implied audience of pro-resistance heretics in mind. So there may have been an underground current of tax resistance already running at this time.

1917–19

World War Ⅰ brought the next big test for Mennonites. In my study of back issues of The Mennonite, it seemed that the General Conference Mennonite Church was utterly unconcerned about the implications of buying “Liberty Loan” war bonds. This puzzled me, as I knew from some earlier research that there were many examples of American Mennonites who were persecuted for refusing to buy such bonds.

I was eager to learn whether the Mennonite Church had been different in this regard, and from what I read in Gospel Herald, indeed it was.

Gospel Herald readers were counseled in no uncertain terms that they were not to purchase Liberty Bonds or in any other voluntary way to assist in supporting the war effort (which would include, for instance, even donations to the Red Cross). However, they were to continue to pay all of their taxes as usual, and should not resist if attempts were made to confiscate their property.

Mennonites were under a great deal of pressure (frequently amounting to violent coercion) to buy war bonds. As a result, there were a variety of attempts to find a way that Mennonites could demonstrate their contributions to the common cause in a way that would appease their oppressors without irritating their consciences. Some gave to relief efforts, and others tried to find some form of government bond (e.g. “Farm Loan Bonds”) that would not be so tainted by war. These had mixed success: the former had the disadvantage of being donations rather than loans, so it was harder for Mennonites to give in sufficient quantity to appease the mob; the latter was often frustrated — the Farm Loan Bonds never materialized, but some Mennonite groups were able to loan money directly to certain local banks in lieu of purchasing Liberty Bonds in a way that apparently was somewhat satisfying all around.

In Canada, Mennonites took the easy way out, purchasing their government’s war bonds, but with a provision that their contributions would be spent “for relief work only.” It was not specified how such an intention was supposed to be put into practice.

For the first time in this period I read a Mennonite suggesting that paying war taxes is problematical, and that perhaps a conscientious Mennonite ought to take legal steps (reducing income, buying fewer goods and services subject to excise taxes) to avoid them.

1920–40

Little changed in the period between the World Wars. When I saw mention of war taxes, it was usually in the context of reinforcing the doctrine that Mennonites should pay any tax demanded under the “two kingdoms” principle.

1941–45

During World War Ⅱ, Mennonites were again challenged by the pressure to buy war bonds. This time the Mennonite Church did not hold up so well, though by all accounts the pressure was much less severe (I don’t know of any examples of mob violence being directed against Mennonites who refused to buy war bonds during this period).

Instead of whole-heartedly refusing to participate in funding the war by purchasing government bonds, the Mennonite Church went through a long and largely pointless process of trying to get their hands on government bonds that weren’t labeled “war” bonds so that Mennonites could purchase those instead. This so-called “Civilian Bonds” program was a total fiasco, and resulted in Mennonites pouring millions of dollars into the U.S. war effort while at the same time congratulating themselves on witnessing to their “testimony of nonsupport of war.”

That said, during this period some of the rigidly pro-obedience-to-government interpretations of Romans 13 and the Render-unto-Caesar story began to be questioned. Writers might drop the hint that paying war taxes was not something Mennonites ought to do cheerfully, but that they must do regrettably.

A secular (or at least non-sectarian) philosophy of pacifism began to assert itself in Mennonite circles, and traditionalist Mennonites were at pains to distinguish the Mennonite doctrine of “nonresistance” from this seductive impostor

1946–59

In the post-war period I start to notice writers urgently defending the traditionalist line on Romans 13 and Render-unto-Caesar when it comes to taxpaying — so hints that there were war tax resisters emerging among Mennonites came before they were permitted to speak for themselves in the pages of Gospel Herald.

In 1950 the magazine begins to mention war tax resisters from outside of the Mennonite community, for instance from the Peacemakers group and the Society of Friends (Quakers). These mentions are typically neutral, neither condemning nor recommending war tax resistance, but they indicate a curiosity about the practice. Beginning in the mid-1950s I also began to see periodic mentions of how much “of the taxpayer’s dollar” was being spent on the military. The combination of these suggested an atmospheric shift in favor of war tax resistance, but it took a long time before Mennonite authors endorsed war tax resistance or Mennonite war tax resisters were mentioned.

Mennonites may have been given a bit of a nudge by hearing about the tax resistance campaign waged by some Amish people who objected to the social security program. That campaign was covered in a series of Gospel Herald articles from 1959–64 and ultimately resulted in the government making some concessions to their conscientious scruples.

1959–62 · 1963

In 1959 the dam burst. The Church of the Brethren and Mennonite Central Committee each formally addressed the problem of paying war taxes — which is to say that each considered that it was a problem, which is a far cry from the former Romans 13 orthodoxy which held that Christians should pay all of their taxes without concern or complaint.

There was a great deal of concern expressed, and one author tried to find a suitable legal path for conscientious objectors to military taxation by means of legal charitable deductions. But it wasn’t until 1963 that an actual war tax resisting Mennonite surfaced in the Gospel Herald.

When John Howard Yoder’s “Why I Don’t Pay My Taxes” was published, Gospel Herald was aware that it was crossing the rubicon. It preceded the essay with a lengthy disclaimer pointing out that it was a heterodox opinion but one that “deserves prayerful consideration.” At that point, the debate came out into the open, as did other war tax resisters.

There was tension from the beginning between arguments for war tax resistance as a form of conscientious objection — that is, not wanting to participate in warfare by paying for it — and as a form of “witness” — that is, civil disobedience as a way of demonstrating to the government the seriousness of one’s concern. Yoder’s influential essay was firmly in the “witness” camp, and much Mennonite war tax resistance — particularly what involved refusing and redirecting what was uncritically called “the military portion” of one’s income tax — is most-easily interpreted as a “witnessing” sort of resistance.

1963–67 · 1968 · 1969–70 · 1971

After the initial flurry of interest excited by Yoder’s essay and the reactions to it, there was a lull in coverage of war tax resistance that lasted through the rest of the mid-1960s.

In mid-1967, though, the Mennonite Church met in General Conference and asked its Committee on Peace and Social Concerns to investigate how Mennonites ought to deal, in an acceptably Biblical way, with “the payment of taxes collected explicitly for war purposes and such other similar involvements in the war effort that they may find among us inconsistent with our profession as a peace church committed to Christ’s way and to suggest such remedial measures that will underscore our conviction and witness.”

An editorial titled “Dare We Pay Taxes for War?” followed shortly after, and the debate was reopened, but on much more favorable terms for the pro-resistance faction.

As the Vietnam War became more obviously awful, and the anti-war and civil rights movements erupted all around them, Mennonites began to be worried that they were missing the boat — that their timidity had kept them from making their vision of a peaceful and inclusive Christian community harmonize with what should have been a favorable moment for such a message. Ought they to become more assertive with their message of peace and brotherhood? To become activists?

Mennonite war tax resistance advocates became more bold, some asserting not only that war tax resistance was an acceptable Mennonite practice but that paying war taxes ought not to be — or going so far as to promote coordinated mass tax resistance on the part of Mennonites as a whole.

Don Kaufman gave respectable theological and historical cover to war tax resistance promoters with his 1970 book What Belongs to Caesar? At this point, the traditionalist arguments for taxpaying take on the aspect of tired clichés, and even the traditionalists tend to concede that paying taxes for war is something regretful even as they insist the Bible commands Christians to go along with it.

1972

Mennonite Church-related colleges, subcommittees, and other institutions were increasingly taking up war tax resistance as a topic of discussion (or even instruction). The Gospel Herald editor came out in favor of war tax resistance in an editorial.

The dream of some sort of government-certified way for conscientious objectors to pay their taxes without paying for war — the equivalent of World War Ⅱ’s “Civilian Bonds” — congealed in the form of the World Peace Tax Fund Act. Early concerns about its value were soon stifled, and it would continue to attract attention from ostensible “people of conscience” throughout the years that followed.

In 1972 the Mennonite Central Committee created a “Taxes for Peace” war tax redirection fund, so to some extent war tax resistance was being formally endorsed and organized by a Mennonite body.

1973 · 1974 · 1975 · 1976–77 · 1978 · 1979 · 1980 · 1981 · 1982

War tax resistance spread to other religious groups and to other countries (including, notably, a briefly-popular war tax resistance movement started by an Anabaptist pastor in Japan) during the 1970s.

Now with support from Gospel Herald editors, the pendulum had swung so far in war tax resisters’ favor that conservative foes were reduced to arguing “if you refuse to pay taxes for war, you should refuse to pay taxes for abortion and other bad things too.”

The magazine formally entered the lobbying game when it included pre-printed cards in one issue that U.S. readers could send to their Congressional representatives to urge them to support the World Peace Tax Fund legislation. Peace Tax Fund lobbying would become a Mennonite Church project, with paid staffers working alongside (or as part of) the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund.

War tax resisters from the Mennonite Church, General Conference Mennonite Church, and Church of the Brethren began to coordinate their efforts, and then, through the “A New Call to Peacemaking” initiative and in other forms, they began to coordinate with Quakers and other Christian war tax resisters.

While there were many examples of Mennonite war tax resisters during this period, and while sympathy for the war tax resistance opinion seems to have become the dominant opinion in the pages of Gospel Herald, I don’t get the impression that the majority of Mennonites are actually practicing war tax resistance.

Whereas the Mennonite Church was way out ahead of the General Conference Mennonite Church when it came to conscientious objection to purchasing Liberty Bonds during World War Ⅰ, in this period they are largely playing catch-up to their General Conference cousins when it comes to war tax resistance.

In 1979 the Mennonite Church issued a statement “on militarism and taxation” that encouraged Mennonites to reduce their tax burden through simple living and charitable deductions, that endorsed some sort of legislation that would allow conscientious objectors to pay their taxes without paying for the military, that urged “careful biblical study” about taxpaying, that “recognize[d] as a valid witness the conscientious refusal to pay a portion of taxes required for war and military efforts,” and that encouraged Mennonite institutions “to seek relief” from the requirement that they withhold taxes from the salaries of objecting employees.

Conservatives regrouped, began to organize, and in the “Smoketown Consultation” of 1979, issued a statement condemning tax resistance among other modern innovations. Conservative criticisms of war tax resistance began to become more sophisticated and more critics of war tax resistance started coming out of the closet.

By 1980, Mennonite Church bodies were under increasing pressure to take a stand one way or the other, and some did decide to endorse, to participate in, or, alternatively, to refuse to endorse war tax resistance.

The board of directors of the Mennonite Church voted to support the General Conference Mennonite Church in its lawsuit in which it was trying to free itself from the requirement that it withhold taxes from its war tax resisting employees. This is the case even though the board was not willing to take any such action regarding its own employees. That lawsuit died in infancy, leaving compliance or civil disobedience as the last tenable options for Mennonite employers.

1983 · 1984 · 1985

When the General Conference Mennonite Church met in its 1983 triennial, the (Old) Mennonite Church was also meeting nearby, taking baby steps toward the eventual unification of the two groups. But while the General Conference voted to begin a corporate civil disobedience action by refusing to withhold taxes from its conscientiously objecting employees, the Mennonite Church more meekly called for “continued study and discernment on the issue of war taxes” while affirming both conscientious tax resistance and conscientious tax paying as valid Mennonite behavior and begging the government for a Peace Tax Fund law.

Another General Assembly of the Mennonite Church was held in 1985, and war tax resistance was again back-burnered.

1986 · 1987

The momentum of war tax resistance was already flagging by the time the Mennonite Church general assembly met in 1987 to again take up the issue that the General Conference Mennonite Church had taken the lead on.

They again put in a good word for Peace Tax Fund legislation, again urged Mennonites to “prayerfully examine” the issue of war tax withholding and to “continue to support” conscientious objectors to war taxes. But there was no real meat on those bones. They asked their board of directors to come up with a recommendation for what to do about withholding taxes from the salaries of objecting employees. The assembly moderator spoke aloud a sentiment that I think was implicit in a lot of the noncommittal buck-passing: “Personally, I think the Peace Tax Fund is a way out of this.”

1988 · 1989

The process of deciding what to do about the withholding question bordered on the ridiculous. First, as noted above, the general assembly asked the board to present them with a considered recommendation at their next (1989) assembly. The board conferred with other denominations who were wrestling with the same issue, and then took testimony at a General Board meeting in 1987 before voting (unanimously!) to recommend that war taxes not be withheld from the paychecks of conscientiously objecting employees. Sounds like a done deal, right?

Not so fast. When the general board met just before the 1989 assembly, they abruptly did an about-face, blaming this on the lukewarm-support their recommendation had gotten from district conferences. They replaced their recommendation with one that removed any suggestion of refusing to withhold taxes, and instead called for more “study of the… issues” and, of course, more hope that a Peace Tax Fund bill would make the problem go away. In other words: the same old same old.

But then when the General Assembly met, they surprised everyone by losing patience with this nonsense and calling the board’s original recommendation back for a vote — it passed with 59% of the delegates’ support.

Now it’s a done deal, right? Nope. When the general board met again soon after the assembly, rather than implementing the Assembly’s vote, they decided that “they would take a clear stand on military taxes and submit another recommendation to the next General Assembly sessions in 1991”!

1991 · 1992 · 1993–94 · 1995 · 1996–97

In 1990 the general board tabled a motion to put the Assembly’s mandate into practice, instead deciding to wait until the conclusion of a “congregational study process.” When the general board met again later that year, after that study process was complete, the new excuse was that “[b]oard members noted a lack of clarity on what the [General Assembly’s] decision meant.” At the board’s first meeting the following year, they finally agreed to honor requests from conscientiously objecting employees who did not want war taxes withheld from their paychecks, but only subject “to development of acceptable policies for implementation approved by the board.”

I saw no indication in Gospel Herald that any such policies were ever presented to the board for approval. My guess is that the stonewalling tactics worked and the Mennonite Church never implemented the will of its General Assembly delegates. When the General Assembly met next, at least as far as I can tell from the Gospel Herald coverage, the topic did not come up.

The foot-draggers had won. By this time the war tax resistance tide was clearly receding. Peace Tax Fund talk and attempts to get people to engage in safe, symbolic mini-resistance acts was swamping what conversation remained about whole-hearted conscientious objection to military taxation. The Gospel Herald editorial page shifted gears again, from promoting war tax resistance to a more standoffish on-the-one-hand / on-the-other-hand vagueness — and would eventually say of war tax resisters that “we generally dismiss [them] as too zealous.”

By 1995 things had gotten so bad that not only was paying war taxes no longer seen as particularly worrisome, but even serving the military as a uniformed soldier was seen as something a Mennonite Church member in good standing could do.

Gospel Herald merged with The Mennonite in early 1998.

In 1975 and 1976, promotion of the new “World Peace Tax Fund Act” legislation crowded out mention of honest-to-goodness war tax resistance in the Church of the Brethren’s Messenger magazine.

The January issue profiled Grace and Harrold Lefevre, who had adopted a simple-living lifestyle (source). Excerpt:

Grace says that profit making is antithetical to their chosen life-style. The Lefevers do not support many of the government’s spending practices and the family’s desire to keep their living at a subsistence level has a concurrent advantage. Seldom have they had to pay income taxes, one yardstick by which they measure their own success as homesteaders.

The April issue reviewed the work of the Church of the Brethren’s lobbying presence in Washington, D.C. (source), which included working with “a representative’s office in developing the World Peace Tax Fund Bill.” One of the “12 political action priorities” the lobbyist team was focusing on was “Providing a war tax alternative to conscientious objectors.”

But aside from those two articles, there was little in the Messenger in 1975 that touched on war tax resistance, and nothing at all in the other Brethren periodicals I reviewed. Perhaps this was just fatigue, after the issue had been talked out thoroughly in previous years. But I’ve noticed this suspicious correlation in my investigation of war tax resistance among Quakers and Mennonites, too, that as the chimera of “peace tax fund” legislation started to become prominent, actual war tax resistance became less so.

The first mention of war taxes I noticed in 1976 didn’t come until half-way through the year, and was a letter promoting the “World Peace Tax Fund” legislation (source).

Marcy Smith put in another plug for the bill in the November issue, but this time at least mentioned war tax resistance in passing as another possible response to war taxes (source). Excerpt:

[A] question arises for followers of Jesus, persons opposed to repression and militarism, persons hoping for a better world free from war — in good conscience, can these people financially support war?

Search for alternatives. There are several alternatives. Some people pay their taxes but include a letter stating their opposition to war; some pay only part of their taxes, omitting the approximate percentage that goes to the military; others refuse to pay any income tax. Members of this latter group face loss of property (sold to reimburse the government for nonpayment of taxes) and even imprisonment.

In 1972, “The World Peace Tax Fund Act” was introduced into Congress. The purpose of this legislation is to allow persons who are conscientiously opposed to war to channel their tax monies into a trust fund. The trust fund would be used to support peace research and education, non-violent conflict resolution, and non-militaristic programs.

Diverting payment. How would it work? If passed by Congress, the World Peace Tax Fund Act would allow persons filing income tax forms to indicate that they are conscientiously opposed to war and do not want their monies supporting the military. That portion of the tax payment which would normally be used for military spending would be diverted into the trust fund. Technically, the World Peace Tax Fund will cover only the percentage being used for current military operations (at this time, approximately 38 percent).

The trust fund is to have a Board of Trustees, appointed by the President of the United States. The Trustees would be “men and women who have demonstrated a sincere and determined commitment to world peace and international friendship and who have experience with the resolution of international conflict by peaceful means.” These people will decide what percentage of the annual budget has been allocated to military spending, therefore, what percentage goes into the trust fund, and for what alternative program(s) this money will be used.

Questions are raised by consideration of the World Peace Tax Fund Act. One which is frequently asked is, “Won’t people who are opposed to welfare, abortion, and other controversial issues want to have special provisions made for them so that their money will not support those programs?” In response, supporters of the Peace Tax answer that non-cooperation and opposition to war is a well-established conviction of many religions, Christian and non-Christian. Because it is a sincere, long-held belief, the refusal to support war, whether in person or with money, must be recognized.

Precedent. A precedent for the World Peace Tax Fund is the Conscientious Objector (CO) provision in the Selective Service System. Just as young men facing the draft could choose alternative service, so could taxpayers elect an alternative use for their money. Like the CO option, however, the Peace Tax raises moral questions.

The World Peace Tax Fund will offer an opportunity for individuals to withhold their money from the military coffers. However, while it is a chance for individual expression, the World Peace Tax Fund will not directly change United States’ military or foreign policy. Just as opting for CO status did not end the draft, the World Peace Tax Fund will not bring the end of the military.

Passage of the World Peace Tax Fund Act will not relieve individuals of the need to speak out against wasteful military spending. It will provide legal, alternative funding for peace-related programs and it will let members of the United States Congress know that a significant proportion of Americans are concerned about their monies being spent on the military.

The December issue reported on a reunion of World War Ⅰ-era conscientious objectors (source). Notice anything missing here?:

Speakers reminded the gathering of conscientious objectors that their fathers took a sharp distinct stand for peace and challenged the sons to find something as effective in their day. Suggestions for present-day peace witnessing were: work against Junior ROTC in public schools, visit Washington to give testimony for peace, and support the World Peace Tax Fund.

In 1977 and 1978, Cliff Kindy wrote a full-throated encouragement of war tax resistance for the Church of the Brethren Messenger, the Camp Mack / Waubee conference enlisted people to sign a war tax resistance pledge, and a “New Call to Peacemaking” conference brought representatives of the three traditional peace churches together.

Wilbur J. Stump wrote in to the March 1977 issue to promote the World Peace Tax Fund bill, which he claimed “would enable me, and others who feel as I do, to have the war part of my taxes used for peace projects” and would be “a legal alternative to paying taxes for military purposes” (source).

That proposed legislation was also boosted by an article a few pages further on in the same issue (source). That article quoted a card that the National Council for a World Peace Tax Fund was asking supporters to send to Washington as saying that the bill “would allow conscientious objectors to have that portion of their taxes which would normally go for military purposes used instead for peace projects.” The article quoted Brethren bill booster Dean M. Miller:

It is obvious that the payment of federal taxes inevitably involves us in war and preparation for war, since tax monies are not clearly differentiated into military and non-military categories…

One avenue of escape for this dilemma is to refuse to pay taxes. However, money refused from tax payments is refused as much from the humane programs of government as from military programs. We are not always able to make clear that we are protesting war and not taxation itself. Furthermore, whatever taxes are withheld as an act of conscience, the government is able to collect by means of levies and confiscations.

An article in a later issue noted that an accompanying Senate bill had been introduced by bipartisan sponsors. Another noted that the United Church of Christ had also endorsed the legislation. And that’s it for 1977.

All of the talk of war tax resistance that used to fill the pages of the Messenger is gone, replaced with this (ultimately fruitless) lobbying. It’s worth noting that the “peace tax fund” legislation originally being promoted was better in many ways from the similar legislation that’s floundering today. That said, this goes to show that from the very beginning, the “peace tax fund” movement has discouraged war tax resistance.

The February 1978 issue brought the first full-throated encouragement of war tax resistance in a long time, from Brethren resister Cliff Kindy (source):

What to render unto Caesar

Last November, 44 people from seven states gathered at Camp Mack in Northern Indiana to study and fellowship together to discern God’s will for the church as it faces requirements from the US government to pay vast sums of money for military-related purposes. We were a mixture of Methodists, Mennonites, and Brethren who had been struggling with this issue for many years. In the face of the fact that as church people we are paying over three times as much money in only the military-related portions of our taxes as we give for all church and charity purposes, our Bible study of the weekend focused on the clear word that Jesus is Lord of the earth.

Our time together was filled with joyful singing, unifying times of worship, meaningful moments of sharing our feelings and experiences, and deep periods of Bible study with openness to Jesus’ call changing our very lives. The retreat was pulled together by Chuck Boyer of On Earth Peace and the BVS peace team from New Windsor. There was a real openness on the part of the leadership (Donald Kaufman, author of What Belongs to Caesar?, and Lee Griffith from Advaita House in Baltimore) to allow the Spirit to change the agenda of the weekend to fit the call coming out of the discernment process.

Although retreats such as this are often little more than times of learning and fellowship, this gathering was an exciting exception with the potential to call the church to a fresh understanding of how total are the demands on those who profess Jesus as Lord of their lives. On Saturday evening and Sunday morning, out of moments of worship, listening for the word of the Lord, and sharing together came the Waubee Peace Pledge (named for Lake Waubee, the location of the Camp Mack retreat) and commitments to continuing activities of witness to our church and the world around us.

Although we were at different positions in our own lives, there was an amazing unity in feeling at Camp Mack that the pledge should be one written as strongly as the Word of God dictates and yet shared with the humility which the sin of our own lives necessitates. What follows is the pledge in its final form with an invitation to each of you to join, if after deep, prayerful searching you find that you must.

Waubee Peace Pledge Ⅰ

Jesus Christ is Lord and we pledge our lives to his Lordship. This is a pledge which we do make and we can make because the Lord fills his people with faith, hope, and love. This is a pledge which we make with humility, but also with conviction, aware of the risks, since under all circumstances, we must obey God rather than people.

We believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, knowing that it is in the resurrection that we have our life. We need follow death no more. Death is conquered. God chooses life for us.

We therefore pledge ourselves to the service of life and the renunciation of death. Jesus Christ is the way and the truth and his way is the way of peace. We will seek to oppose the way of war.

Specifically we make this pledge to our brothers and sisters in Christ:

1. Since we do not give our bodies for war, neither will we give our money. We will refuse payment of federal telephone taxes and federal income taxes which go for military purposes. Where our treasure is, there our hearts will be also. If our treasure is involved in making war, our hearts cannot be set toward making peace. We will pay no taxes for war, and if that means legal or other jeopardy for any of us, we will seek to support one another as sisters and brothers. The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. Render unto God what belongs to God.
2. We further pledge ourselves to urgently communicate with brothers and sisters in our churches, urging them to join us in refusing money for war. We will also work to have annual meetings of our churches take a firm position against payment of war taxes, and to have church agencies agree to refuse withholding of these taxes from the pay of employees. We believe that we who are the body of Christ should not serve as a military tax collection agency.
3. We further pledge ourselves to keep our hearts and lives open to the movement of God’s Spirit and to follow where Christ might lead us on the path of peace. We pray for help and guidance — that we might be instruments of God’s peace.

We invite others to join in doing the words of this covenant and we seek to support those who are struggling toward this and other means of witness against war in the world. We want to join you in whatever ways of sharing and commitment are possible through our common life in Christ. Peace be with you.

Because we are at different points of commitment, a second pledge came out of this conference. There was a common understanding by participants in the conference that Jesus is the King of Peace and that it is wrong to pay taxes for war, but for some that witness to life takes a different form. Support for the World Peace Tax Fund is the form that takes for some of us. Overall, though, the feeling of the conference was that, as a church, God calls us much beyond that in our witness for peace and our no to war.

As signers of Waubee Peace Pledge Ⅱ, we invite you to join if you feel God’s leading in the matter.

Waubee Peace Pledge Ⅱ

We, in spirit and in conscience affirm the Waubee Peace Pledge and fully support our sisters and brothers of that covenant. At this time in our lives we feel unable to commit ourselves to non-payment of income and phone taxes. We do commit our time, energy, and resources to searching for alternate channels of resistance, and pledge ourselves to continued seeking of God’s will for us in acting definitively to oppose those taxes for payment of war.

We give thanks for the freedom given us through Christ which enables us in this search, and we pray for the strength and hope to use our freedom as servants of God.

Out of these pledges and the activities of the weekend came several commitments and decisions. It was felt that there was no need for a new newsletter but that our effort should be joined with the God and Caesar newsletter (Commission on Home Ministries, General Conference Mennonite Church, Box 347, Newton, KS 67114) and be supplemented as needed by a memo from the BVS peace team. An exciting development was the surfacing of a group interested in serious Bible study of scriptures dealing with the issue of taxes. Tony Sayer will be coordinating that study through the mail. Three commitments relating to the church were to 1) share with congregations and individuals on the topic of the church and taxes which are used for war; 2) ask the decision-making bodies of our churches to endorse a statement calling all our church-related institutions to stop withholding taxes for IRS when most of those go to the US military; and 3) offer ourselves if the need arises to fill (in name only) the positions of high risk which might be threatened with prosecution by IRS because of the radical nature of some of our stances for peace. Many at the conference will be working toward a concerted witness in the spring with the institutions of the US government that are ignoring the breaking of the Kingdom of God into our midst.

Whatever our point of commitment we want to encourage each other to deeper Christian discipleship in spite of the radically scandalous nature of the kingdom as it takes shape in our world. May God grant us the grace to travel in that way.

Following this was a list of the names of twenty-two signers of pledge #1, and five of pledge #2.

The April 1978 issue went back to peace tax fund stuff, with a profile of National Council for a World Peace Tax Fund promoter Wilbur Stump (source). Stump was an attendee at the Waubee / Camp Mack conference, and one of the signers of pledge #2.

Anita and Richard Buckwalter shared their letter to the phone company in which they announced “we are no longer going to pay ‘protection’ money (blood money) to support [Uncle Sam’s] death machine” (source):

P.S. We donate the amount of our withheld phone tax to the Peace Tax Fund at Lansing Church of the Brethren, to be used in ministries for peacemaking.

They also shared their letter to the IRS in which they explained their refusal to pay a portion of their income taxes. Excerpt:

If you check your files, you will see that our protest has been consistent and lengthy. Our purpose was then and is now to witness to the way of the Prince of Peace and to register our conscientious opposition to the use of our taxes for war-making. To this end, we now feel called to move one step farther in our witness. We can not in good conscience or in good faith sign over to you that portion of our taxes — roughly 35 percent in 1977 — that goes for present military use. We refuse to take the initiative in paying for death and the destruction of God’s creation. Therefore, we will not willingly forward this money to you; this is our witness to the powers that be — that God’s will for peace lives on in the victory of Christ over the powers of death.

Please note that we do not argue with the government’s power to collect taxes. We accept the legitimate taxing powers of the state and willingly submit our taxes when we conscientiously can; we will even help to pay for past sins and wars of this nation — otherwise the percentage would be much higher. But after much study of the Bible, prayer, and dialogue, we have come to the conviction that we will make this witness to the gospel of peace as over against the insanity of planning for war and nuclear holocausts.

Unfortunately, because the World Peace Tax Fund Act has not been enacted yet by Congress, our actions mean some inconvenience to you. We regret this, and for your sake hope for the day when that law will make our witness “legal.” Until then, we know that you have the power to collect our money. We will not obstruct your efforts in that direction; neither will we hide or make personal gain from the money. We are now and always will be open and direct with you about our intentions; we don’t wish to cause offense. And we will forward copies of this letter to our elected representatives.

If you have any questions regarding our beliefs, we would be glad to dialogue with you.

There were three queries, from three separate congregations, concerning the World Peace Tax Fund Act, on the agenda at the 1978 Annual Conference. A Standing Committee drafted a statement in response, “urging that Brethren support the WPTF through Annual Conference communiques to the President of the United States and appropriate Congressional committees, dissemination of information from the General Offices, continued promotion by the Washington Office, and congregational and individual letter-writing to members of Congress.” (source) But some skepticism began to emerge:

While the Standing Committee recommendation passed with negligible delegate opposition, discussion of the issue included challenging questions about means of conscientious objection to war. Cliff Kindy asked the church to consider the link between affluent life-styles and warfare, and suggested that living below a taxable income level is one response to the tax issue.

He urged the church to grapple again with tax refusal as a form of resisting participation in war. Another speaker warned that the WPTF is “an attempt for us to be more comfortable with what is happening in the world” by seeking government approval of our resistance rather than acting boldly regardless of legal sanction.

John Reimer, of Western Plains District, asked if the WPTF would actually reduce military spending, or merely create a fund for peace research and education by reducing civilian sectors of the federal budgets while leaving the growing military budget unchallenged.

The December 1978 issue noted that the Shenandoah District Board had begun a sort of conscientious objector census, asking draft-age youth to register their conscientious objection, while “[p]ersons who are supportive of conscientious objection to the payment of war taxes may register their beliefs on a third form.” (source)

Finally, the October “New Call to Peacemaking” conference was also covered in the December issue (source). That conference was the first attempt to convene for a coordinated peacemaking response from members of the three traditional peace churches. Excerpt:

Reaching consensus on war tax resistance was not as easy. Although it was listed third among the concerns of this section, tax resistance was clearly the most widely debated item at the conference and support for the idea came from many of the regional meetings. Finally, in five strong statements, delegates called upon Brethren, Friends, and Mennonites to “seriously consider refusal to pay the military portion of their federal taxes as a response to Christ’s call to radical discipleship,” challenged congregations to uphold those who do resist with spiritual, legal, and material support; called upon church and conference agencies to seriously consider the requests of their employees who ask that their taxes not be withheld; suggested that alternative “tax” payments be channeled into a peace fund established by New Call to Peacemaking; and called upon the denominations, congregations, and meetings to give high priority to the study and promotion of war tax resistance.

Dale Brown of the Church of the Brethren also penned an article on “The Bible on Tax Resistance” for Sojourners magazine in 1977.

The very different attitude toward war taxes (which usually went without mention) at The Brethren Evangelist can be illustrated by this excerpt from the convocation delivered by Ashland College dean Joseph Schultz (source). Schultz was an ordained minister in the Brethren Church, with which Ashland College is affiliated:

One cannot visit the Strategic Air Command Headquarters at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, without experiencing a welter of conflicting emotions. Predominant is gratitude for the sense of security which those enormously complicated defense systems can generate, and a more tolerant attitude even toward taxes. There is, of course, a feeling of awe, mixed with a tinge of doubt as to whether man actually can master such technological refinements. And there is also an overpowering tug of regret that so much money must be spent for such expensive gadgets which may never be used. A still greater foreboding is that they may be used, and expanded.

In 1979 readers of the Messenger learned the legal how-tos of war tax resistance, while even the conservative Brethren Evangelist was willing to publish “New Call to Peacekeeping”’s summons to war tax resistance.

As had become common at this point, discussion of the World Peace Tax Fund bill often overshadowed war tax resistance when war taxes were discussed. The bill was boosted in February (source), July (source), and August (source). Here’s another example mention, from an October profile of Charles Anderson (source):

Charles admits some pangs of conscience over his life-style. His own affluence is difficult for him to reconcile with peacemaking, since he believes that the gap between the prosperous and the poor breeds violence. His payment of tax, more than half of which is used for military purposes, is also stressful. Support of the World Peace Tax Fund is an effort to resolve this personal conflict.

In April the magazine reported that the Mennonites seemed to out in front of the Brethren on the war tax issue (source):

Church as tax collector protested by Mennonites

Delegates attending a special meeting of the General Conference Mennonite Church in Minneapolis in February voted to launch a vigorous campaign to exempt the church from acting as a tax collector for the state. The 500 delegates at the conference, called to discern the Christian response to militarism, passed the resolution by a nine to one margin.

A central focus of discussion was tax resistance already being practiced among Mennonites and the request of one such person, a General Conference employee, that the church stop withholding war taxes from her wages. The General Board denied her request because it is illegal for an employer not to act as a tax collector for the Internal Revenue Service.

Delegates affirmed that decision but instructed the General Board to vigorously search for legal avenues to exempt the church from collecting taxes so individuals employed by the church would be free to follow their own conscience.

The May issue profiled Ralph Dull, and noted that “throughout the past 25 years… the Dulls have withheld from their taxes the portion allotted to the military.” (source)

“Sometimes you get so frustrated, you just have to do something,” Ralph said. For the past two years Ralph and others have taken food to the IRS as a witness that taxes should be used for feeding the hungry instead of supporting the military.

“I’m not sure it does any good, but it raises the issue.”

Phil Rieman wrote in to the July issue, urging Brethren to stick together in order to overcome the fear of government reprisals when considering war tax resistance (source).

The November issue reprinted a lengthy article by William Durland, a lawyer who founded the Center on Law and Pacifism (and later helped found NWTRCC), on the practical and legal aspects of war tax resistance:

Praying for peace: Guidelines on military tax refusal

When President Carter’s military tax budget for fiscal year 1979 was criticized, he replied that he would not apologize for it. While recommending cutbacks in health, education and human needs, he increased the portion of the budget allocated to bombs and bullets.

Many Christians are beginning to realize that they cannot use mammon for murder and expect a welcome at the millennium. So they are looking for advice on ways to refuse complicity with the war machine.

Recently the Center on Law and Pacifism was organized in Philadelphia to serve people who need advice and support in the relationship of their radical religious, pacifist convictions to the laws which attempt to obstruct their conscientious objection to violence. One of the main projects of the Center has been to aid people in their quest for information on how to be military tax refusers. The Center is in the process of publishing such a study and the following is an overview of that report.

People want to know how to withhold their taxes, what happens if they do so and what legal remedies exist for them to witness to their conscientious objection in the courts of this land. Usually people who are in this position are employees. So we will talk about them first, then the employer, the corporation, the income tax refuser and the telephone tax refuser. Employees receive their income in the form of wages which are subject to withholding before they see their check. Employees must fill out a W4 form with their employer. The W4 form determines the amount of money to be withheld from each paycheck. The more allowances you claim the less money is withheld.

You are allowed a number of allowances on your W4 form depending upon how many dependents you have and what your anticipated itemized deductions are. The employer determines how much money to withhold from your weekly paycheck on the basis of your W4 form. Therefore, in order to reduce or eliminate withholding, you can file a new W4 form claiming more allowances. There is nothing fraudulent about this procedure as long as you inform the IRS when you file your income tax return as to why you took the allowances on your W4 form. When it comes time for your income tax, it is important that it be consistent with this claim. This is done by taking a war tax deduction on your income tax form under “miscellaneous deductions.”

This is one of four methods to avoid withholding. The second method is by working in an occupation exempt from the withholding law. A third method is by becoming self-employed as a consultant or independent contractor. Fourth, by earning less than a taxable income you can avoid not only withholding, but also any income tax liability whatsoever.

If you are successful in computing the sufficient number of allowances — which will constitute rendering your withholding to a point where you can take your deduction on your income tax — then no further problem remains until that time for the employee. However, should the employee choose not to use the allowance method, but rather to ask the employer not to withhold any of the withholding tax, then there is a problem for both employer and employee.

The Internal Revenue Code of 1954, as amended, requires employers making payment of wages to deduct and withhold from such wages a tax determined in accordance with IRS tables. The employer is liable for the amount required to be deducted and withheld. Any employer who fails is liable to the IRS for that amount plus a civil penalty equal to the tax amount. There is also a criminal penalty of $10,000 fine and/or five years imprisonment for willful failure to pay or collect the amount due.

Some employers have wanted to protect the right of their employees to exercise their rights of conscience even though the employer does not share the same viewpoint. In this event, employers have refused to withhold and have been taken to court. Eventually they wind up paying and requiring the employee to reimburse them.

But what if the whole corporation becomes a war tax refuser, rather than just one of its employees? In that event the corporation will not withhold any tax at all because they are conscientiously opposed to paying military taxes.

Recently we have seen some organizations which were created on radical religious, pacifist principles beginning to refuse to pay military taxes as a corporation rather than simply to support the conscience of one or more of their employees. They see this as their own witness to the immorality of war taxes. There is a possibility of losing tax-exempt status and other rights, but they are willing to witness in this way and suffer for conscience’s sake.

Everyone who makes a minimum amount of money a year is required by law to file an income tax return. Whether you made your money as an employee, an employer or are self-employed, you must file form 1040 and complete Schedule A (“Itemized Deductions”) in order to take an income tax deduction for war. Those who are self-employed can write in a “war tax credit” instead of a deduction, and simply withhold a percentage of the tax owed and send a letter to the IRS explaining what they are doing.

Another popular way of resisting military taxes has been refusal to pay the tax on the telephone bill. In times past, the IRS took quite a bit of time tracing down telephone tax refusers. Since the end of the Vietnam War, this has not been the case, although we have heard of one case recently where the telephone company closed down the service of a telephone tax refuser.

Whatever category you are in, you must decide how much to refuse and what you are going to do with that money. Many organizations, such as the World Peace Tax Fund and the various chapters of War Resisters League, are equipped to advise you on the breakdown of the national budget. But generally, from year to year, the military portion of the budget is calculated anywhere from 35 percent to 53 percent, depending upon whether current military expenditures for past wars are included.

For those who wish to put their money to good use while it is being withheld, there are various alternative funds which invest in human resources and use your money for that purpose. Many people hope that the World Peace Tax Fund Act — designed to allow the taxpayer to earmark a specific amount of tax money to go into a federal fund to be used only for peaceful purposes — will be approved by Congress soon.

What happens when you take these steps? How do you cope with the IRS? No matter what category of refuser you are, what generally is going to happen to you is something like this: If a tax is owed, a notice of tax will be sent to you. The IRS is required to issue this bill which is a demand for payment. You are then required by law to make payment within 10 days of the date of this bill. If the tax remains unpaid after the 10-day period, a statutory lien is automatically attached to your property. The law also provides for interest and penalty for late payment at this time.

Once this notice of tax lien has been filed at your courthouse, it becomes a matter of public record and may adversely affect your business transactions or other financial interests. It could impair your credit rating; therefore, it is normally filed only after the IRS has sent you a second notice of deficiency and tried to contact you personally, giving you the opportunity to pay.

After the lien has been filed, a levy may be taken. A levy is the taking of property to satisfy tax liability. The tax may be collected by a levy on any property belonging to you. In the case of levies being made on salaries or wages, you will usually be given written notice, in addition to the notice of demand, at least 10 days before the levy is served.

Generally, court authorization is not required before a levy action is taken, unless collection personnel must enter private premises to accomplish their levy action. The only legal requirements are that the taxes are owed and that the notice and demand for payment have been sent to your last known address. In taking a levy action, the IRS first considers levying on such property as wages, salaries and bank accounts. Levying on this type of property is referred to as a seizure.

Willful failure to file or pay income tax can result in a criminal sentence of one year and/or $10,000 fine. However, we know of no cases which have ever resulted in criminal penalties, except where there is a total failure to file any income tax form at all.

When you receive your notice of deficiency from the IRS, you will also be notified that you may elect to appeal your case to the US Tax Court; if you decide to do so within 90 days of that time, the IRS process against you is halted for the duration of the case. Several people have gone to Tax Court following this procedure, although in no case has anyone “won” there.

The Center on Law and Pacifism has advised and supported people filing cases in Tax Court and on the Appellate and US Supreme Court levels also. If you lose your case in Tax Court, you may appeal to higher courts, and ultimately to the Supreme Court. These appeals are based on the First Amendment free exercise of religion and other constitutional provisions.

Many of us are presently refusing 35 to 50 percent or more of our income taxes. For others just beginning to consider war tax refusal, or those reluctant to refuse taxes in those quantities, a new project called People Pay for Peace, under the auspices of the Center on Law and Pacifism, offers an opportunity to participate.

The Center is coordinating this symbolic tax refusal movement by new reformers who withheld from their 1978 tax returns a few dollars, symbolizing their witness against military armament. The amount is so small that it is unlikely the IRS will try to levy it. Multiplied by thousands of people, this small amount will constitute a significant conscientious objection to payment for war.

There is still time to build the kingdom, time to protest armaments, time to create a spiritual community for those who turn from the idols of fear.

If I were to say to you, “I will not kill my neighbor, but I will pay someone else to do it,” would you not hold me accountable? If we refuse to kill our neighbor but allow our government to do it with our money, are we not to be held accountable?

But then we must witness and suffer the consequences of our military tax refusal for conscience’s sake. This is the price some Christians are paying for peace in 1979.

According to another article in that issue, of 200 people who responded to a “Survey on Life-Style Changes” in an earlier issue of the magazine, 20% had taken the step of “keeping income down in order not to pay taxes.” Another 25% wanted nothing to do with such a step. (source)

I was a little surprised to see the fairly conservative Brethren Evangelist devote several pages of its January 1979 issue to reprinting part of the Statement of the Findings Committee of the “New Call to Peacekeeping” conference (source). The Brethren Church was not (as the Church of the Brethren was) a partner to this conference, but they did send an observer.

The magazine was careful in its preface to say: “The printing of this Statement does not mean that either the Peace Coordinator [Doc Shank of the Brethren Church, who attended the conference] or the Brethren Publishing Company endorses it in its entirety. It is our hope that it will be read carefully and with an open mind.” Mention of tax resistance was brief in the published excerpt (“We urge the development of support groups within congregations and meetings for those individuals who are working at peace issues such as war tax resistance, simple lifestyles, and nonviolent action.”) but this makes for a rare positive mention in this usually more stodgy magazine.

In February the magazine followed up with a second excerpt from the Statement (source). This one was more explicit and direct:

1. We call upon members of the Historic Peace Churches to seriously consider refusal to pay the military portion of their federal taxes, as a response to Christ’s call to radical discipleship.
2. We challenge ourselves and also our congregations and meetings to uphold war tax resisters with spiritual, emotional, legal, and material support.
3. We call on our church and conference agencies to enter into dialogue with employees who ask, for reasons of moral conviction, that their taxes not be withheld.
4. We suggest that alternative “tax” payments be channeled into a peace fund initiated by the New Call to Peacemaking or into existing peace funds of constituent groups.
5. We call on our denominations, congregations and meetings to give high priority to the study of war tax resistance in our own circles and beyond.

Another element of the statement gave a thumbs-up to the World Peace Tax Fund legislation.

There were a couple of horrified letters to the editor that followed, from Brethren who didn’t want to see their church tangled up with the anti-war movement, but otherwise not much discussion.

Here are some excerpts from The Catholic News Archive concerning war tax resistance from 1972:

The National Catholic News Service carried this dispatch on 24 January 1972:

Episcopal Diocese Pays Protesting Priest’s Tax Bill

By NC News Service, Philadelphia (NC) — The Episcopal diocese of Philadelphia has decided to pay $545 in income taxes withheld by one of its priests as a protest against the Vietnam War.

After the Rev. David Gracie, an urban missioner here, had refused for 10 months to pay half of his income tax assessment, the Internal Revenue Service went to his employer asking the Episcopal diocese to turn over $545 of the priest’s salary.

Refusing to do so would have made the diocese liable for possible criminal charges for non-payment of the taxes.

Father Gracie appealed to the Episcopal council “to join in a corporate act of resistance against this barbaric, immoral war.” Paying the bill, he said, “will finish me as a tax resister.”

Voting to pay the tax bill, the council also set up a committee to study the theological implications of conscientious tax resistance and tax exemption.

Tom Cornell reviewed the book Ain’t Gonna Pay for War No More (Robert Calvert, The War Tax Resistance, 1971) in the March 1972 issue of Catholic Worker:

Ain’t Gonna Pay No More

This book represents a tremendous contribution to the movement against war and for a more decent society, in itself and in the War Tax Resistance campaign from which it emerges. Probably the most significant development in The Movement during the past two years has been the growth of organised tax resistance along with its alternate funds. Tax resistance has long been recognised as a pillar of anti-war activity, at least in theory. After long incubation since the beginning of the Cold War in 1948, tax resistance is taking its place in the minds of many pacifist activists alongside such stances as conscientious objection and draft resistance.

Ain’t Gonna Pay is an unusual movement publication. It is pocket size, has a soft cover, is handsomely but modestly produced. The type is legible and generously spaced. It is crammed with useful information in a digestible form, and it is sprightly and wryly humorous. To Bob Calvert is due not only credit for this most useful book, but also for the cohesion and outreach the national tax resistance has attained. A most extraordinary man, you may read more about him in his own disarming paragraphs “About the Author,” in the comments about him by Bradford Lyttle on the back cover, and in David Dellinger’s Preface.

Karl Meyer

Much of the impetus for the tax resistance movement has come from the writings of Karl Meyer. Karl has recently been released from Sandstone federal prison where he served 10 months for one of his experiments with tax resistance. An important new development he has spurred has been the alternate fund. Basic reasoning behind both tax resistance and the fund is well stated by Karl himself in his October–November 1969 CW article. It is well to repeat portions of it:

If we pool all of the tax money that we did not pay in locally administered funds, we can create a model for a future in which men can regain direct control of their common institutions and effectively deny their consent to governmental programs they believe evil.

In each community or region we can set up a common fund. Each contributor will have one vote, as in a cooperative. The members will meet from time to time to set priorities and guidelines for administering it according to their guidelines.

Assuming that the federal income tax contributions of most people in the movement probably exceed their voluntary political, organizational and charitable contributions, we would expect that the tax alternative funds could become one of the most substantial sources of money for the projects and purposes in which we most strongly believe. But beyond that we could hope that our experience in mutual aid through these cooperative funds would bear fruit in the development of ashrams and communities for closer economic and social cooperation, for it is when our constructive action and our resistance to evil become for real that we see the need and value of mutual aid and begin to create cooperative alternatives within the competitive society on which we live.

If we ignore or neglect the great potential of tax resistance joined to constructive action, we must be deaf to history and blind to experience.

Do we not know that tax resistance has been one of the greatest sources and strategies of revolutionary movements throughout history? Has not history shown that taxation is a process requiring the general consent and cooperation of the populace? Has it not been shown that when numbers of people reject a government by withdrawing their consent from the elaborate bureaucratic process of taxation, that government is in deep trouble? Did not the French Revolution begin with tax resistance? Was not tax resistance the slogan and rallying cry of the American Revolution: “Taxation without representation is tyranny I”?… Did not Thoreau fashion the cornerstone of American resistance theory out of his own experiences as a tax resister? Was not Gandhi’s largest and most significant campaign of civil disobedience, the Salt March, based on the strategy of tax resistance?

Can we not see what the IRS knows full well: that even where the public gives general consent to the process of taxation it is always and everywhere a grudging and tentative consent, a resentful and querulous consent, a fragile consent that must always be nursed and safeguarded by positive relations? There exists among the public at large a great reservoir of grievance, a vast subliminal potential for tax resistance and evasion that only needs to be aroused by news of widespread tax resistance.

Let us learn from the experience of the draft resistance movement and the telephone tax refusal campaign. A few years ago, many people regarded draft refusal as a personal witness of the solitary conscience. Today it has taken on the dimension of a social movement. It is, however, restricted by the narrow age and sex range of those who are subject to conscription, and even more restricted by the narrowness of the draft as a single focus of action.

When we combine real war tax resistance with the tremendous constructive potential of a Fund for Humanity, we will have raised a banner to which all honest and courageous men of conscience can repair.

Penalties

People are always anxious to know the penalties for various forms of tax resistance. There is a chapter of questions and answers taken from the column by Payno Warbucks in Tax Talk, organ of the WTR ($2 a year subscription). It is practical and accurate. Stories of individuals who have dealt with IRS’ and the courts’ attempts to make them pay are told succinctly. Long-time readers will recall the stories of Wally and Juanita Nelson, Rev. Maurice McCracken, Walter Gormly and Eroseanna Robinson. Some recent efforts to collect taxes-due through confiscation of property and sale at public auctions are related with hardly suppressed glee. Here is the story of Bob Marcus:

On November 18, 1970, the IRS auctioned the car of Bob Marcus at the National Guard Armory in Boulder, Colorado for $1.25 in phone tax money. People from the Institute/Mountain West, a branch of the Institute for the Study of Nonviolence and Denver War Tax Resistance decided to make good use of the opportunity. They sent out a leaflet to the 3500 people in the Institute’s mailing list, telling them what had happened and asking that they contribute to a fund to buy Bob’s car back at the auction. It was explained that all money bid for the car above the unpaid tax and fees is refunded to the tax (non)payer. The excess money would be put into the war tax resistance alternative fund. The auction was promoted as a “joint IRS/Institute for the Study of Nonviolence fund-raiser for war tax resistance.”

About thirty people showed up at the auction, held in a stiff wind outside the armory. “We passed around cookies in the shape of the resistance omega, tossed balloons of all colors into the air, and held signs which read ‘I ain’t gonna pay for war no more’ and ‘celebrate life — don’t pay war tax.’ ”

Beneath a skull and crossbones “Jolly Roger” kite that went wild in the wind, two revenuers read the IRS ground rules. They told Bob that he could still redeem the car. He stepped foreword and said, “But can I redeem my soul?” The car was sold for $277.00. It took about twenty minutes to complete the transaction because much of the money was in twenty dollar bills.

After the IRS got its blood money, and the Institute expenses had been paid, the war tax resistance alternative fund had netted $203.35. Bob donated the car to the community. He decided that he preferred bicycling to polluting the air.

In addition, all the media covered the story extensively and pretty sympathetically. It can be stated that the IRS bought tens of thousands of dollars worth of publicity for the idea of war tax resistance. “A final benefit is that we showed the people of the community that tax resisters will stick together and help each other out.” How’s that for a bit of nonviolent jujitsu? (pp. 89–90.)

The book ends with a listing of the eighty-nine local War Tax Resistance centers around the country (as of press date last October). There are now almost one hundred more, as well as twenty-three alternate or “Life Funds.” These centers offer tax-resistance counseling, supply current literature, buttons and bumper stickers, coordinate speakers, produce demonstrations, and administer Life Funds. I suggest you buy at least five copies of this book to give to friends who might then help you to organise a war resistance center in your locale. You will get all the help you need from Bob Calvert

The National Catholic Reporter covered Karl Meyer’s war tax resistance in its 10 March 1972 issue:

An act of “political significance”

Resister urges withholding of taxes

By Jerry De Muth

Special to the National Catholic Reporter — Chicago — “Tax resistance is now like draft resistance was in 1967,” Catholic Worker Karl Meyer told 1,000 persons who gathered to greet him on his parole from prison where he had been serving a two-year sentence for falsifying his federal income tax deductions.

“When I tore up my draft card in 1959, it was an act of personal witness,” the 34-year-old Meyer explained. “Today it has become an act of political significance because so many do it.

“In 1966, eight of us refused to pay the telephone excise tax. Now at least 100,000 do not pay that ten per cent tax.” The tax was levied for the expressed purpose of raising funds for the war in Indochina.

Today, Meyer sees the number of income tax resisters as numbering at least 10,000 and perhaps as many as 20,000. And, he hopes that soon this act of personal witness will also become an act of political significance.

In an interview after his talk, Meyer said, “I like concrete results. If you don’t send $500 to Washington, you can spend that $500 as you wish on something positive. That’s concrete, but there’s no other concrete result unless tax resistance becomes organized and grows.

“The first step,” Meyer said, “is nonpayment of the ten per cent telephone tax. Then there is nonpayment of any balance due or nonpayment of $50, $100 or a significant amount of the income tax. If many do this it does have political significance.”

The affair for Meyer included a $5-a-plate dinner, with the proceeds going to the Chicago Peace Council, Peoples Coalition for Peace and Justice and the Catholic Worker movement. Referring to the people who promoted the dinner, he said:

“They should have decided not to send $500 in tax money to Washington and instead sent it to the Peace Council. But instead they send $500 to Washington and send $5 to the Peace Council, and then they wonder why Washington is strong and the Peace Council is weak.”

Meyer was first exposed to pacifism by his mother, who taught him about Gandhi, and his father, William H. Meyer, a former U.S. representative from Vermont who was a conscientious objector during World War Ⅱ. While in the House, the elder Meyer proposed the abolition of both Selective Service and the manufacture of nuclear weapons.

In 1957, young Meyer became involved in active resistance, joined the Catholic Worker and converted to Catholicism. Also a believer in such “educational” acts as peace marches, he has participated in many such actions, including a ten-month, 6,000-mile San Francisco to Moscow march in 1961.

Meyer’s frequent protests against the war have resulted in numerous arrests. In 1966, he was expelled from South Vietnam for antiwar activities and, he says, similar efforts resulted in his being beaten up by delegates to the Lions International convention in Chicago in 1967.

Meyer began his protest against the use of tax money for the military in 1958 by having his income tax underwithheld. In 1960, he progressed to all-out resistance through the influence of a Chicago tax resister, Eroseanna Robinson, an Olympic high jump champion.

So that no income tax would be withheld from her pay, Miss Robinson would change jobs every time her income from a job totaled more than $600. At the end of the year she did not report any of her income. She was arrested and while detained in Cook county jail in Chicago began to fast while Meyer and others picketed outside. Sentenced to a year in prison, she continued to fast. After 108 days the Bureau of Prisons, Meyer said, asked the judge to release her and the judge complied.

“I said to myself then that I was not going to pay taxes any more,” Meyer said. “I began by leafletting the IRS IRS offices.”

At the time Meyer was supporting a House of Hospitality in Chicago and legally claimed as exemptions the persons who were living there. As a result, no taxes were withheld. “But as I phased out the house,” he added, “I no longer legally had a sufficient number of exemptions. But in 1969 I claimed 12 anyway, and in 1970 I claimed 10.”

Meyer was legally entitled to four — for himself; his wife, Jean; a son, William, now eight, and a daughter, Kristin, now four. (They since have had a third child, Eric, now one year old.) It was for those extra exemptions that Meyer received a maximum two-year sentence plus a $1,000 fine last May 21. He was released from the federal prison at Sandstone, Minn. — where Joe Mulligan and Ed Hoffmans of the Chicago 15 are also imprisoned — on Feb. 16 and will remain on parole until May of next year.

Meyer has frequently changed jobs to avoid a lien on his wages. Once, the government got $46.60 before he quit one job. It is the only income tax he has paid in the past 11 years, he says. He has also avoided paying all but $8 of the federal excise tax on phone service.

“My jobs were determined by my radical pattern of life,” he explained. “I was in jail a lot. I was not thinking of building a career, which was good because, as soon as you stop living as the poor live and stop working as the poor work, you stop caring about their needs.”

A simple lifestyle is a very important part of tax resistance for the Meyers. “There are essential principles more important than tax resistance,” Meyer emphasized. “They are the idea of voluntary poverty and simplicity of life which we have done through our House of Hospitality, sharing our income with others.

“The other major principle is the refusal to do harm to others, especially to claim control of our own productivity and not pay for the killing of others. We can claim control of our lives through tax resistance.”

Meyer said there is only one reason why more persons, even if they strongly oppose the war, do not refuse to pay part or all of their income taxes — “They’re afraid.”

“But the first time it’s done, there’s certainly no risk,” he said confidently. Partly for this reason he backs mass tax resistance as a national antiwar action.

“The question,” he said, “is how do you tell people about their own strengths. They mistakenly think that Karl Meyer is stronger then they.”

Meyer, who frequently delves into history with a preference for the writings of Thomas Paine, fondly points out that the American Revolution, the French Revolution and Gandhi’s movement for Indian independence all had their roots in tax resistance.

The step of tax resistance, he feels, is important for those who have unsuccessfully urged their senators to vote against military appropriations. “When the time comes for us to vote against appropriations — and that day comes April 15 — do we vote against appropriations?” he asked. “The courage we ask of our representatives should not be greater than the courage we ask of ourselves.”

As for the Meyers’ future, Meyer said that they will not pay the $2,000 in taxes owed for past years going back to 1962, will not pay the telephone tax and will not pay his $1,000 fine.

“But in order that we may be allowed to remain together and not be separated by imprisonment,” he added, “we will limit our income to an amount that will not be taxable, to about $4,800. It’s easy to live on this. In fact, I think we can live on $4,000 by the simplification of our life. We will then be in a position to share the surplus with others not so fortunate as us.”

Meyer was working at a hospital when he was arrested a year ago and now is employed by “an association,” working with the mentally retarded. “We will continue to do productive work for the good of society,” he vowed. “We will continue to oppose this war and all other wars and all militarism by the testimony of our lives and the witness of our actions.”

From the 30 March 1972 The Catholic Advocate:

Promotes “Tax Resistance” to War

A 27-year-old priest refuses to pay the “war share” of his federal income tax. Rev. Thomas McKenna, assistant pastor at St. Luke’s, St. Paul, Minn., in a letter to more than 100 priests inviting them to discuss possible tax resistance, said: “No matter how we vote, no matter what we say, no matter how many statements, marches and demonstrations we endorse, we still support the war (and the weekly death toll) with a large portion of every dollar we pay in federal income and telephone excise taxes.”

A follow-up on this from the National Catholic Reporter, 7 April 1972:

17 clergy to withhold tax

Special to the National Catholic Reporter — St. Paul, Minn. — Seventeen Twin Cities’ area priests, ministers and seminarians have announced that they will refuse to pay a portion of their federal income tax to protest the Vietnam war. Among the group are five priests of the St. Paul-Minneapolis archdiocese.

“We cannot before God support or finance this unjustifiable killing of fellow human beings whether American or Southeast Asian,” said Father Thomas McKenna, a leader of the group, in a statement read at the federal building here. “Therefore, we feel that we must in conscience refuse to pay that portion of our federal income tax that goes to support this inhuman, ungodly war.”

Father McKenna, an assistant pastor at St. Luke’s Catholic church in St. Paul, said that 25 priests of the archdiocese had indicated to him that they might join in the tax resistance. The 20 who did not join, he said, are still considering other forms of protest, such as withholding the federal telephone tax.

The tax resisters’ statement came at the conclusion of a peaceful demonstration by more than 200 clergy, seminarians and laymen who marched from St. Paul’s Dayton Avenue Presbyterian church to the St. Paul cathedral and then to the federal building. The march was organized by the Ecumenical Witness for Peace.

A skeptical reporter for the Pittsburgh Catholic penned this for its 21 April 1972 edition:

Most pay little attention

Peace marchers get mixed reaction

By William McClinton

A procession of 25 people, even when escorting a black coffin and led by a man with a cross, doesn’t make much of a ripple in the hurrying crowds in downtown Pittsburgh at lunch time.

So it was with the 25 clergy and laity — mostly Catholic — who marched some 10 blocks to the Federal Bldg. last Friday noon to protest the escalation of the Vietnam war and the use of their tax money to finance the war.

Their sidewalk procession drew attention in some less busy areas, but in the main blocks was separated and absorbed by the crowd.

Nevertheless, the war headlines at every newsstand illustrated the relevancy of their concern, and the news media was present, almost as numerous as the marchers.

The 25 were members or friends of the recently opened Thomas Merton Peace and Justice Center, an interfaith but predominately Catholic effort on the South Side.

Larry Kessler, director of the Center, said the cross was to illustrate the religious motivation of the protesters who cannot “in conscience” support “this atrocity we call the Indochina war.”

Asked if the escalation wasn’t the result of North Vietnam’s attack, several responded in essence: “What do you expect? We’ve had plenty of time to get out. We shouldn’t be there in the first place.”

The demonstrators chose the front of the Diocese of Pittsburgh Bldg. to form, unknown to diocesan officials. As they filed through town they passed out handbills signed by 45 persons, including 12 diocesan priests and three nuns, announcing the undersigned were withholding part of their federal tax payment or the 10 per cent phone excise tax to protest the war. The handbills urged others to “conscientiously object” the same way. Many people took the bills and read them impassively.

The procession stopped at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral on Sixth St. for a brief prayer service and again at the Methodist Bldg. on Smithfield at Seventh where the closest thing to an incident occurred.

The ground floor of the building houses a bank branch, and Fr. Donald Fisher had hardly begun paraphrasing a psalm through a portable mike when the building manager rushed out and announced that “You can’t do that here.” It was private property, the manager said tensely and when the demonstrators tried to discuss it, he hurried off to call the police. By the time he returned, however, the demonstration had moved on.

At the Federal Bldg. on Liberty Ave. where several more demonstrators were waiting, the group set the wooden coffin down in the outdoor plaza, and after Kessler read from one of Fr. Daniel Berrigan’s writings, they tossed into the coffin some old phone bills and income tax forms as a symbolic gesture.

Several dozen persons who gathered to watch included four or five young men preparing to enlist at Armed Forces offices inside the building.

“It’s a shame.” said Robert DeRose Jr., 18, from Gallitzin in Cambria County, a sturdy, dark-haired youth who said — looking at his watch — he was to be sworn into the Navy “in 10 minutes.”

“All they’re doing is letting Communism spread around the world,” he said heatedly. “Yet they’ll be the first to scream when Communism comes in.”

There was a humorous moment when five of the priests went inside to pay their self-reduced income tax and — even as any hapless taxpayer — were unwittingly directed by a solicitous Internal Revenue guide to the wrong line.

“I don’t take any money here,” the official told them after they had worked their way up to his desk and Fr. Donald McIlvane had introduced everyone all around and explained their purpose. “You have to give it to the cashier.”

The cashier proved to be an attractive redhead at the other end of the room who listened politely to the priests’ explanations, smiled and said, “Thank you,” as she accepted each payment.

The procession’s religious aura commanded respect — the prayers, the obvious concern for peaceful protest, the appeal to Christian principles, as the marchers see those principles.

But the intensity of the division this war has generated was reflected by the reaction of a stumpy, graying man on one streetcorner. “They’re a bunch of Communists,” he told a companion contemptuously. “They wouldn’t do that in Russia.”

“Not in East Germany either,” his friend replied in a strong foreign accent.

The National Catholic News Service carried this dispatch on 5 June 1972:

Tax Problems Dog Catholic Worker Movement

By NC News Service New York (NC) — “My little case is to explain to the court that performing the corporal works of mercy is indeed charitable even under the standards imposed by our government, and I refuse to apply for tax exemption.”

With those words Dorothy Day, the 74-year-old founder of the Catholic Worker movement, has summarized what she expects to say when she appears July 3 in a federal court in Lewisburg, Pa.

Miss Day will have to explain why the Catholic Worker movement has not paid $296,359 in fines, penalties and back income taxes to the Internal Revenue Service for the past six years.

A confirmed pacifist, Miss Day has opposed the theory of a just war, a theory that has been foremost in her decision not to apply for federal tax exemption.

“Our refusal to apply for exemption status in our practice of the works of mercy is part of our protest against war and the present social ‘order’ which brings on wars today,” she said.

“One of the most costly protests against war in the way of long enduring personal sacrifice is to refuse to pay income taxes for war,” she wrote recently in the Catholic Worker newspaper.

She argues that the Catholic Worker organization has never paid salaries. Its volunteer workers are given room, board, clothing and free instruction in the Catholic Worker movement.

“So we do not need to pay federal income taxes,” she contends.

“I’m sure that many will think me a fool indeed, almost criminally negligent for not taking more care to safeguard, not just the bank account, but the welfare of all the lame, halt, and blind — deserving or undeserving poor — who come to us.”

Miss Day told NC News Service she considers the tax investigations a “harassment by the federal government” because the Catholic Worker movement is against all war.

The Catholic Worker is not incorporated as a religious organization and therefore is not exempt from paying federal income taxes. She said the Catholic Worker does not incorporate because it is a principal of the movement to avoid all ties with the state.

She says the Catholic Worker did not set up a defense committee to campaign for Catholic funds.

“I can only trust that this crisis will pass,” she said. “I am sure that some way will be found either to avert the disaster, or for us to continue to care for our old, sick, helpless, hungry and homeless if it happens,” she said.

The 21 July 1972 National Catholic Reporter reported that the “peace tax fund” idea had captured Catholic attention as well:

Applying papal suggestions

From tax dollars to peace fund

By Phil Haslanger

Special to the National Catholic Reporter, Madison, Wis.— Trying to apply papal suggestions to political realities is not the easiest job in the world. Take, for example, Pope Paul’s suggestion in his encyclical Populorum Progressio that a world fund be established “to be made up of part of the money spent on arms, to relieve the most destitute of this world.”

For Dr. Daniel J. Guilfoil, a 39-year-old philosophy professor at Edgewood college here, that suggestion provided the key to his dream of having part of his tax money be deferred from military expenses to help the poor.

With the introduction of a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives which would enable citizens to avoid paying war taxes on grounds of conscience (N.C.R., April 28), Guilfoil saw his dream moving closer to reality.

Although Guilfoil had worked for about two years to have his congressman, Rep. Robert Kastenmeier (D-Wis.), introduce such a bill, the push which finally got the bill introduced came from a citizens group in Ann Arbor, Mich. under the leadership of Dr. David Bassett, a physician.

Neither Guilfoil nor the Ann Arbor group had any knowledge about each other — a fact Guilfoil interprets as both a weakness in the tactical effort and a sign that the bill embodies an idea whose time has come.

The path Guilfoil followed which led him to work for such legislation was not dissimilar from that followed by other liberal Catholics in the wake of Vatican Ⅱ.

As enthusiasm for the declarations of the council yielded to frustration over the pace of change, Guilfoil, his wife, Barbara (“She’s probably more activist than I am”) and their nine children became a part of Madison’s John ⅩⅩⅢ experimental community.

With the community, they worked on civil rights and open housing legislation and, in Guilfoil’s words, “moved into the peace movement, if you will, as a connected issue.”

Working with the social action committee of Madison Area Community of Churches to establish a draft counseling center, Guilfoil became sensitive to the witness offered by conscientious objectors and he began to think that “the principle of alternative service should be extended to all people,” not just to draftable young men.

At the same time, he was aware of the growing tax resistance movement to protest the war and he was considering the implications of Populorum Progressio.

The various threads were woven together by Guilfoil and other members of John ⅩⅩⅢ into a petition, signatures were gathered and a resolution was adopted by the social action committee of the diocesan priests’ senate urging “legislation to create an alternate fund to administer to the needs of people.”

From there, more signatures were collected and on election night, 1970, Guilfoil talked with Kastenmeier about the possibility of having legislation to that effect introduced. The congressman responded favorably and suggested the petitions and information be sent to his administrative assistant.

Kastenmeier’s office considered the proposal, but decided that the time was not yet ripe for such a bill.

Some time later the idea of just such a bill was stirring in Ann Arbor. By fall the World Peace Tax Fund steering committee had been established. According to Arthur Mack, the committee’s corresponding secretary, a second committee was established in Washington to lobby towards such legislation.

Rep. Ronald Dellums (D-Cal.) liked the idea and put his office to work on rounding up cosponsors. In April of this year, he and the other nine congressmen introduced the “bill and saw it referred to the House Ways and Means committee.

April 19, Guilfoil prodded the faculty of Edgewood college to “go on record as supporting the right of all citizens to the privilege of the status of ‘conscientious objector.’ ” The following day, he convinced the social action commission of Blessed Sacrament parish in Madison to unanimously adopt a resolution asking the parish council to educate the parish “on the theology of alternate service.”

Resolutions written by Guilfoil supporting the passage of the World Peace Tax Fund act the bill pending in the House were adopted by both the Second District caucus of the Democratic party (Madison) and, most significantly of all, by the State Democratic party as a part of its platform.

Guilfoil sees his efforts on the local level as part of the push to draw national attention to the bill. He said he hopes the National Conference of Catholic Bishops will consider supporting the legislation, and he would like to see other national groups support the bill.

As for the realistic chances of getting the bill out of committee and passed into law, Guilfoil admits, “I’m not optimistic. But if you told me two years ago it would even be a bill now. I wouldn’t have believed you.”

He sees lobbying combined with education as the lever to getting the bill moving. “There’s enough sentiment today that taxes are being directed foolishly,” he says. “It’s a matter of getting people aware that straight people can think about these things.”

For Catholic groups, he added, the concepts of the bill “must be tied to the pacifist and just war traditions of the church — the doctrine of the church is surely important.”

As for Guilfoil himself, he is not waiting for the government to pass legislation which will make that papal suggestion a political reality. He has joined with others in the state to form a Wisconsin Peace Fund.

The specifics of the group haven’t been worked out yet, but basically, members will put a part of their tax money into the fund and the group will disperse it to local causes.

What Guilfoil and the people in Ann Arbor hope is that someday that peace fund will be on a national or even international level. The World Peace Tax Fund act has helped sustain that hope.

The 18 August 1972 issue of National Catholic Reporter reported on a national war tax resistance conference and included a sidebar on “How tax resisters resist taxes.” From the opening paragraphs, it appears that a political endorsement was on the agenda, suggesting that the conference was much more mainstream-liberal then than it is now (I doubt such an endorsement would be seriously considered by a NWTRCC conference these days):

War tax resisters

Can’t quite “endorse” McGovern

Jim Castelli, Associate Editor

Kansas City, Mo. — The second National War Tax Resistance Conference, attended by about 40 persons from around the country, gave what amounted to a qualified endorsement to the presidential candidacy of Senator George McGovern.

The tax resisters approved a statement praising McGovern for his promises to end the war, cut military spending, restudy the entire tax system and support a guaranteed annual income.

The statement also said the political climate in the country would substantially improve with McGovern as president and that he would end “repressive” actions by the government.

But the tax resisters also said they saw a negative side to McGovern, saying he “completely believes in maintaining United States power in the world” and that providing more arms for Israel, as McGovern has said he would do, is not the way to end the crisis in the Middle East.

Despite such criticisms, the statement said that most of the participants would probably vote for McGovern. Discussion indicated that those at the conference not voting for McGovern would either vote for Dr. Benjamin Spock, the People’s Party candidate, or not vote at all.

One participant suggested that applying pressure on McGovern from the left would let voters see him as a moderate, and therefore more acceptable. Another noted that because War Tax Resistance has strong anarchistic tendencies, a statement in support of McGovern might induce some anarchists to vote in this election.

The conference was held at St. Mark’s church, an unusual church in that it is staffed by Protestant and Catholic clergy. The participants, for the most part, wore sandals, well-worn jeans and long hair but weren’t all young. They came from both coasts and such cities as Denver, Chicago and Ann Arbor, Mich.

Also coming out of the conference was an agreement to draw up a statement on what the focus of the war tax resistance movement should be when the war ends. It was agreed tax resisters should continue to oppose the domination of the federal budget by the military and the centralization of power in the hands of governmental and corporate structures.

This opposition, the participants said, should include presenting alternatives, such as a nonviolent peace-keeping force and a blueprint for converting to an economy based on peace — for example, an analysis of how to shift the emphasis at Boeing Aircraft to building mass transportation facilities.

The conference expressed opposition to key segments of the World Peace Fund Tax Act, a measure introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Congressman Ron Dellums (D-Calif.) and nine other legislators.

The bill would allow taxpayers who qualified for conscientious objector status under Selective Service standards to divert the percentage of their taxes slated for the military to a “world peace tax board,” which would study peaceful alternatives to international conflict.

The major objections to the bill were the screening process to obtain the conscientious objector status and the fact that the alternative funds would still be controlled at the national level, preventing tax money from being used in the community from which it was paid.

No specific action was taken at the conference on the bill, but Robert Calvert, coordinator of War Tax Resistance, said he expects a new national working committee to try to rework the bill in October.

Calvert, in an interview, said the number of Americans withholding taxes because of the war is growing. He estimated that between 100,000 and 200,000 are either refusing to page the 10 per cent federal telephone excise tax, which is used for the war, or refusing to pay all or part of their income tax.

At present, he said, there are 192 war tax resistance centers in the U.S. He added that each regional office of the Internal Revenue Service now has a person or department dealing with taxpayers protesting the war.

“We’d love to get our hands on the IRS list,” he said. “They have many more names of resisters than we have because many people resist on their own without working with a local center.”

The two main purposes of the conference were organizational: the creation of a working committee, and the question of whether or not to move the national office from New York to Kansas City.

The proposal to move the office was approved, partly because of expected lower operating costs, but mostly because War Tax Resistance wants to be closer to “middle America.” The move is expected to be made by the end of the year.

The working committee, now being assembled, will consist of representatives of national regions and the seven state area around Kansas City. The committee is to meet every two months beginning in October.

How tax resisters resist taxes

Special to the National Catholic Reporter, Kansas City, Mo.— How do you resist paying taxes as a protest against the war, and what happens when you do?

Interviews conducted at the second annual National War Tax Resistance Conference and materials put out by the movement provide these answers:

There are a variety of ways to resist taxes: Withholding the federal telephone excise tax, withholding all or part of the federal income tax, not filing a tax return at all, paying taxes under protest and keeping one’s earnings below a taxable level. All have a different set of consequences.

The most common form of resistance is withholding the telephone tax, says Robert Calvert, coordinator of the War Tax Resistance organization. The telephone tax, which helps finance the war, currently is 10 per cent.

To withhold it, resisters simply deduct the tax when they pay their phone bills, explaining that it is a protest against the war, not against the phone company. Members of War Tax Resistance say that telephone companies have told resisters that their service will not be interrupted, and that they regard the protest as a matter between the individual and the government.

They point out, however, that phone companies do provide the Internal Revenue Service with the names of resisters. The experience of resisters is that, after several written demands for payment, IRS can usually secure payment by attaching the resister’s bank account, taking the amount of the unpaid tax, plus up to six per cent interest.

Technically, a person who resists the telephone tax is liable to a year’s imprisonment and a $10,000 fine, but so far the government has been satisfied with collection, resisters say.

In Calvert’s opinion, the government might still decide to arrest telephone tax resisters. But, he adds, it has been the history of movements such as tax resistance that they are strengthened by governmental crackdowns.

Resisting income taxes is more difficult because taxes are withheld from most people’s wages during the year. Thus, resisters who owe money at the end of the year can refuse to pay it or, through the use of such tactics as claiming more dependents than they actually have, file for a refund.

Income tax resistance is viewed more seriously by the government; resisters have been jailed, but penalties are greater for falsification of income tax returns or failure to file than for refusal to pay. (Any tax returns indicating resistance should be accompanied by a letter explaining the nature of the protest.)

So far, however, either because their returns have been accepted by IRS computers, or because appeals proceedings can take years, most resisters have still not had to pay taxes.

Tax resisters advise against keeping withheld tax money, however. The organization instead advises putting the money into alternate funds which may be used to assist tax resisters who are challenged by the government.

The government can seize personal property such as cars and houses for public auction to bring in the owed taxes. (Whatever money is brought in over and above the taxes and auction fees is returned to the resister.)

These auctions have become occasions for peace demonstrations. An auction for a car that had been seized from a Kansas man for tax resistance heard bids of Vietnamese tears, coffins, and napalmed babies. Also, a resister can often arrange to have friends or a resistance center make the actual purchase at the auction.

The use of withholding allowances as a means of tax resistance was devised by John Egnal, a lawyer from Philadelphia representing resister Jack Malinowski. Malinowski was charged with supplying “false information” on his tax status; he had claimed 14 dependents (the number of other people in the Philadelphia tax resistance center), an amount which negated his tax for the year. He was found guilty, but has not as yet been sentenced.

The problem with past methods of tax resistance is that they are all technically illegal because they hinge on a yes or no answer to questions regarding certain parts of the internal revenue code. The use of withholding allowances, however, seems to avoid this situation.

An employee fills out IRS form W-4 to indicate to his employer the number of deductions he will claim for the coming year; form W-4E indicates that no tax liability has been incurred for the year, usually because of income below the taxable level.

People who expect to have a large number of itemized deductions can enter a number of withholding allowances — converted from dollar figures by a chart on the back of the W-4 form — which will reduce tax payments; this way, higher taxes are not paid and then refunded at the end of the year.

Egnal holds that “the withholding allowance claim would be applicable to any tax resister who believed that, as a result of the illegal and immoral conduct of the U.S. government, some or all of the federal taxes claimed could not lawfully be collected.

“If one held such a belief… it would be necessary to improvise some basis for preparing one’s income tax returns, since IRS has not, as yet, seen fit to follow the law of this country, which includes not only the Internal Revenue code, but also numerous principles of international law to which the U.S. has subscribed.”

This improvisation, according to Egnal, would be a “war crimes deduction” for which a withholding allowance could be entered.

Egnal, claims that if the government were to prosecute such a resister, “the only false statement they could point to would be ‘I am entitled to a war crimes deduction because…’ Such a statement reflects a legal conclusion which has never been ruled upon by any court, and which… enjoys the support of many noted scholars.”

Even if the courts eventually rule that such deductions are illegal, Egnal points out that past rulings would not allow prosecution because the fact that the legal question was in doubt erases the possibility of “willfully” breaking the law.

A similar situation exists with form W-4E, which states “Under penalties of perjury, I certify that I incurred no liability for federal income tax for 1971 and that I anticipate that I will incur no liability for federal income tax for 1972.”

A resister could, according to Egnal, use the “war crimes deduction” to justify the claim that he was not liable for any taxes.

(A follow-up brief in the 17 November 1972 issue read: “There was some discussion at the annual conference of War Tax Resistance last summer that if McGovern lost the election, his followers would make a prime target for the tax resistance movement. He lost, and the war is still going on; if it drags on until income tax time, it will be interesting to see if there is an increase in tax resistance.” Another, in the 24 November 1972 issue read: “The war tax resistance movement has found a new home in Mid-America — Kansas City. The organization moved from New York to save money and to be physically closer to ‘middle Americans.’ Nearby Independence, Mo. is the national headquarters of the paramilitary Minutemen, but tax resistance members don’t expect any hassles. One resister joked, ‘Maybe we can learn something from them about grassroots organization.’ The new address will be 912 E. 31^st St., Kansas City, Mo.”)

The same issue included this opinion piece:

War taxes and conscience

“It is the issue of coresponsibility and complicity that will become salient”

By Roderick Hindery

Even if United States military forces in Indochina should be reduced to a residual element or less before or after the November election, the war will remain an issue crucial for the conscience and morale of those who led it and those who were coresponsible. It is particularly the issue of coresponsibility or complicity that will become salient. The fact that the Indochina war was explicitly rejected by millions who simultaneously supported it by taxes and other forms of cooperation may make the judgment of Nuremberg the question of the present era: “that a person acted pursuant to the order of his government or a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.”

One of the more constructive expressions of an emerging consciousness of coresponsibility for military action is the World Peace Tax Fund Act (N.C.R. July 21). Although the bill may never escape committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, as one attempt to legislate an alternative to economic participation in war for those conscientiously opposed, it is enormously important. The rationale attached to the bill argues that since compulsory significant participation in war against one’s religious conscience is opposed to the original spirit of the First Amendment, the law should allow a realistic alternative such as contributions to qualified peace-related activities — for example, research toward non-military solutions of conflict. The compatibility of alternate contributions with responsible citizenship is defended by reference to Christian tradition, the traditions of the United States, judicial interpretations and legal precedents.

In a survey of some of the bill’s ramifications, the authors assure their readers that tried and proven standards for determining authentic conscientious objector status can also be applied to military tax objectors. As for other possible abuses, it is alleged that the Peace Tax Fund’s passage would not open the floodgates to earmarking tax dollars because opposition to war involves a right of conscience that is uniquely fundamental. In a concluding section entitled “Effectiveness,” the Peace Tax Fund proposal realistically admits that the military budget would not decrease unless Congress were persuaded by the fund’s growth to reduce the priority of military spending. Tax exemption is primarily a means to that end.

In noting that the bill would “force” taxpayers to decide whether they can support military spending, the authors underline the thesis with which we began — the importance of an emerging consciousness about coresponsibility for war through military spending.

The Peace Tax Fund, of course, is not the only path of dissent being explored. An increasing body of tax resisters (192 listed groups in the United States) have experimented with alternatives ranging from individual protests to communal resistance and harassment of the Internal Revenue Service. Taxes are withheld totally or in amounts proportionate to military spending by the government. Equivalent sums are donated to social and charitable causes. However, if the citizen takes steps to insure that military taxes are not confiscated from his salary or property, he is liable to legal sanction.

While refusal to work for taxable wages and emigration are further options, emigration alone may offer the only route toward a “pure non-cooperation.” When economic systems can support war by deficit spending and by the transfer of non-military funds to military budgets, even participation in a future World Peace Tax Fund would not neutralize the fact that living within a military economy is itself a kind of cooperation in war.

The option most commonly followed is to justify support of military spending as a means of buying time and freedom to work toward a less militaristic administration.

None of these options to economic military support necessarily presuppose a totally pacifistic position. In principle they also apply to citizens concerned with the justice of supporting particular wars, revolutions, counterrevolutions, or exorbitantly massive forms of national defense. In each of these instances it is maintained that money becomes power and weaponry which kills against one’s conscience.

What was always true is becoming increasingly obvious. Conscientious objection is a problem not only for draftees but for all taxpayers and their dependents. The fact that the problem is not yet widely recognized is partly grounded in a profound dilemma never resolved in the history of theoretical ethics and only tenuously confronted by national constitutions and international law. The dilemma can be expressed in two questions: 1) Is there not a basic and inalienable human right/duty not to kill against one’s conscience? 2) If this right/duty is inalienable, how can the right/duty of national defense override it?

Within the legal dimension the dilemma is not yet totally resolved. The Russian Constitution, for instance, legislates that the duty of defense supersedes freedom of conscience. The United States Constitution refers to no such priority, only to a religious freedom which implicitly presupposes a prior freedom of conscience in matters so basic as killing. No subsequent legislation has inverted that valuation, and judicial decisions consistently interpret the Constitution in favor of the primacy of conscience (at least in reference to opposition to war in general). This priority of conscience was explicitly confirmed by the principles of Nuremberg, which were approved by the United States and promulgated as international law by the United Nations in 1950. In principle the United States accepts international law as an authority which obliges its own citizens.

In the United States the priority of conscience still needs clearer and more explicit legislation. The unconstitutionality of compulsory war tax may be argued from the perspective of the written Constitution (intentions or actual practice of the framers or citizens who first ratified it) or from the viewpoint of the living constitution (manifested in judicial decisions or people’s referendums). From either or both of these methodological perspectives the priority of conscience may be argued more cogently than it has in the past.

In other words, whatever may be said for or against other freedoms of conscience, the liberty not to kill, when killing is judged immoral, is unique. It is so basic to the freedom of conscience which the Constitution presupposes, that there is need of an explicit amendment or other legislation to guide courts in deciding all cases involved. A bill like the World Peace Tax Fund, while not as irreversible or desirable as a constitutional amendment, is needed to help explicate what is already implicit at the legal level.

Within the ambit of theoretical ethics which operate autonomously outside or within various world religions, the priority of the right not to kill against one’s conscience is in jeopardy due to two as yet unsolved theoretical controversies.

The first controversy is the one engendered by classic utilitarianism’s principle that morality is always determined by whatever serves the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people. As recently as John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard U. Press, 1972; cf. The New York Times Book Review, July 16, 1972), philosophers have joined in continued debate about the adequacy of the greatest happiness principle and have argued the pragmatic need to supplement it by postulating an equal and, in some ways, prior principle of justice: Since certain individual rights of life or liberty are inalienable, their inviolability necessarily, if sometimes invisibly, brings about the greatest happiness. This principle is not acceptable to everyone since it seems verifiable only in the future.

The second controversy has been sharpened by analysis of ethical language. Are rights something people merely feel about and confer or bestow on one another? If rights are dependent on what others think of us or what they contract with us, how can rights be inalienable? Or, if some rights are inalienable, what is the source of human certitude in specifying them, intuition or what?

Ethical thought which is not rooted in heteronomous religious authority continues to founder on these two controversies and lacks the ringing certitude about inalienable rights proclaimed by the United States Declaration of Independence and the Founding Fathers, by the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, or by the international principles of Nuremberg. Consequently, the sources of national and international laws manifest a greater unanimity and authority than do conflicting approaches in theoretical ethics. Whoever does not immediately perceive the self-evidence of the liberty not to kill against one’s conscience will apparently function best when he appeals not to a universal authority in reasoned ethics but to the legal authority and presuppositions of constitutions or international law. As mentioned previously, those who are convinced of conscientious objection’s legality should work for its logical extension into the economic sphere.

Not all wars or military spending appear so clearly immoral to so many people as does the war in Vietnam. There are other issues on which progressives or conservatives may be divided among their own groups, e.g., future support of military operations in the Near East or Latin America, nuclear defense programs powerful enough to destroy the planet many times over, or foreign aid programs thought to be gravely exploitative and imperialistic. The authors of the World Peace Tax Fund Act give assurances that exemption from war taxes would not open the floodgates for citizens who wish to earmark their tax dollars in other programs. On the contrary, this concern may be offset with the judgment that, given a plurality of fundamental human rights, there may be many other crucial moral issues on which citizens should vote with their dollars.

The lasting merit of the growing war tax resistance movement may not be that it helped end the war in Indochina, but that it raised the question of citizens’ coresponsibility to the moral priority it deserves, not only in matters of war and peace, but in every matter of life and death. The issue of citizens’ coresponsible decision-making entails more than the purity and liberty of individual consciences. If free and informed decisions by greater numbers have anything to do with the effectiveness of democracy, the future of democracy itself may be involved.

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Roderick Hindery teaches religious ethics at Temple university in Philadelphia.