California Anarchoblogs

War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in 1999

In 1999 long-time Friends Journal editor (and war tax resister) Vinton Deming stepped down. The amount of coverage of war tax resistance in the Journal had been declining throughout the decade, and 1999 was no exception to this trend.

A note in the August issue read:

In signing A Call to Noncooperation with the War in Yugoslavia, 55 opponents of the conflict expressed a commitment to refuse to pay taxes for the war. National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee in May released the group’s declaration along with the list of signers. On releasing the call, Bill Ramsey, a Friend from St. Louis, Mo., and a signer, said, “We oppose this diversion of public money [from the Social Security surplus] to a new war, but most urgently we are refusing to pay for war on Yugoslavia because it is killing people in Kosovo, Serbia, and Montenegro. We are choosing to redirect our taxes to heal people.”

The September issue included a letter-to-the-editor from Bill and Fran Taber announcing a particularly large war tax redirection:

A few weeks ago we received several phone calls from a Friend who, like us, has long been concerned about how to avoid paying taxes to support the military-industrial complex. Our friend had recently been in touch with an Olney Friends School graduate who was excited about new governance arrangements being worked out to allow the official control of the school to pass from Ohio Yearly Meeting to a board composed of alumni and friends of Olney. This enthusiasm and the school’s need for scholarship funds at this time of transition prompted our friend to ask us to be transmitters of an anonymous gift of $100,000 to the Friends of Olney, Inc., (the group responsible for the school beginning July 1, 1999).

Naturally we said we would be glad to do this. We soon received an express package containing an anonymous $100,000 check from our friend’s financial agency as well as the friend’s letter explaining how this gift was a way of placing money in a worthy cause rather than allowing it to go for destructive purposes.

After we had passed the check and the letter on to the new board, our friend suggested and we agreed that the publication of the letter which accompanied the check would be a good way to continue the ongoing Quaker exercise on how to avoid complicity in war, as well as showing one way to put excess money to good use. The letter follows.

---

Dear Friends of Olney — 

In the spirit of Isaiah’s prophetic calling that would have us turn our swords into plowshares and in concert with Creation’s own declarations of God’s transforming power as recorded and envisioned in the Bible, I have been led to transfer to you these funds in the amount of $100,000, that they might serve to support your new tenure at Olney School. It is my wish that this contribution be utilized to provide partial scholarship funding for ten or more students who might thereby be enabled to attend school there next year.

I offer this gift as one who has long wrestled with and refused payment of military taxes to our government, and has now resolved to cease paying such taxes in light of revelations through written and other sources that our nation has over many years been engaged in the development and testing of “doomsday weaponry” — acknowledged at a recent Pentagon news conference as likely to become a “growth industry.”

By way of sorting out my own personal response to such darkness, I have been endeavoring to turn my daily walk, personal and financial resources, and whatever presence and service I can offer, towards honoring that living Word which would have us dwell together in peace with all our neighbors and ourselves — “not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit saith the Lord.”

And in this regard, I have become particularly concerned with some of the problems that our families and children are experiencing, living as we are under the shadow of an increasingly mesmerizing, materializing, and mortifying “high-tech” way of life, dominated and fueled by our nation’s military-industrial complex, which President Eisenhower himself tried to forewarn us of more than 30 years ago.

It is my fervent prayer that we will all be moved by the Spirit and our own lives’ particular needs and concerns to invest ourselves in helping shepherd our young ones back into the fold of that “everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure” which David knew (Ⅱ Samuel 23:5) as his felt experience of God’s rainbow covenant (Gen. 9:12) “which I make between me and you and all living creatures that is with you for perpetual generations.”

Indeed, my own personal experience in recent years persuades me that as we covenant together to re-engage ourselves in more reverently-related interactive ways of living (as early Friends and many native cultures have and do) we will recover that love of life Way of experiential truth-seeking, together with our own “still small voice.” And hopefully, as we become more attentive to and enlivened through this wider context of God’s creation “in which we live and move and have our being,” we shall realize all the blessings it holds for our own health, balanced living, and well-being.

So I have great respect and hope for your Friends of Olney group and the new course you are charting and pray it will prove an exciting and successful adventure in community learning for all involved.

May the Spirit bless and abide with you!

Yours in good faith,

A Friend

The November issue noted:

Lake Erie Yearly Meeting minuted support for David and Miyoko Inouye Bassett as conscientious objectors to the payment of military taxes. Since 1969 the Bassetts have refused to pay voluntarily the military portion of their federal taxes. They have actively worked for U.S. Peace Tax Fund legislation, resubmitted this year, that would allow a person to pay full taxes but direct that none of the money be used for military purposes. The couple worked for years as doctors in India with American Friends Service Committee.

Spencer Coxe attacked the Peace Tax Fund scheme in an op-ed in the December issue:

The Peace Tax movement has dangerous implications

David Bassett’s article on the Peace Tax movement, which appeared a couple of years ago [see ♇ 14 August 2013] was of interest to me, for I had long been unclear (and uneasy) about the concept. As a Friend and a pacifist with a lifelong affinity to dissent and lost causes, my heart sympathized with the movement, but my head warned me it was in error. Even after reading David Bassett’s article, my head, which writes this essay, has prevailed.

The Peace Tax is meaningless in practical effect. Congress determines; and will continue to determine, the military budget. “Earmarking” one’s taxes for non-military purposes will have no influence whatsoever, except in the inconceivable event that so many subscribers signed up that there were not enough non-earmarked funds to satisfy what Congress considered military needs — at which point Congress would repeal the law. A large number of subscribers would be required to reach this point. A smaller number of determined lobbyists and agitators could persuade Congress to curb military expenditures, even though the protesters represented a minority of the electorate, just as the gun lobby is effective despite the rejection of its agenda by a majority.

A Peace Tax Fund is not only meaningless, but counterproductive and potentially dangerous. It would ease the conscience of pacifists by creating the illusion that they are influencing policy, but it would deflect attention from meaningful and essential activity aimed at a) electing sympathetic members of Congress and a sympathetic President and b) lobbying, demonstrating and agitating to persuade the executive and legislative branches to reorder the national agenda.

The movement has dangerous implications. It undermines representative democracy, the only viable system of government for a huge, diverse nation. Policy-making is entrusted to democratically elected representatives who can be (but often aren’t) held accountable to the electorate. On any issue, there are bound to be voters who disagree with a decision of Congress. Our social contract requires us to accept — with rare exceptions to be discussed below — decisions we dislike. To allow an end-run around this compact for one group invites other interests to demand equal treatment. The lumber baron can forbid the use of his taxes to extend national parks. Rightwing bigots will withhold their taxes from a school lunch program. Permitting individuals to allocate their taxes as they see fit would probably result in a government agenda worse than what we have now, and it would ultimately lead to chaos.

For several reasons the Peace Tax movement will have symbolic significance of little or no value. First, the movement will not generate publicity. It is so low-key and so “legal” that it will be disregarded. Second, unlike the tax-refuser, the peace-taxer courts no risk of prosecution or penalty. His or her act will not be seen as brave or noteworthy; it will evoke no admiration, no controversy, no reflection (in fact, it will be invisible). Third, since the earmarking will be sanctioned by statute, its use will cause the government no embarrassment and almost no inconvenience. By legally sanctioning the earmarking, Congress is effectively removing the movement’s symbolic significance, and channeling a potentially effective resistance movement into a harmless backwater.

Each of us should, as a general rule, abide by decisions of Congress. For today’s pacifist — as for last century’s abolitionist — the occasion will arise when an act of government is so repugnant to conscience that one must resort to civil disobedience. This point is reached when in one’s estimation the issue of conscience transcends the demands that society lays upon us.

The Peace Tax movement boils down to a feel-good means of salving the conscience of those of us distressed by militarism. It deflects us from hard work within the democratic process, and it absolves us from the penalties inflicted upon those who choose civil disobedience.

This long-overdue criticism of the Peace Tax Fund scheme would provoke a great deal of debate in the letters-to-the-editor column the following year.

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 ftled 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 ftled 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 aaually 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 doggedlly 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.”

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 1995

There were scattered mentions of war tax resistance in the Friends Journal in 1995.

Carole Depp noted in passing in a January issue that “[m]y husband chose to retire early two years ago so that we could live on less than a taxable income in order to avoid paying for our government’s violence and militarism.”

At a “Quaker Farmers Gathering” in March, one participant addressed the question of “Quakerism and farming: How do they come together in our lives?” with the answer “Farming is my way of tax resisting. I paid only $36 in taxes last year.” (This according to a report on the gathering in the November issue.)

The April issue had a couple of brief notes about war tax resistance:

• As the deadline for filing U.S. income taxes approaches, the Peace Taxpayers would like everyone to consider the following no- or low-risk actions:

  Living on less than a taxable income:

  no income taxes will be used for paying for war, and moving toward lower personal consumption practices has the additional advantage of using less energy and limited resources.

  Living on a non-taxable income:

  a fortunate minority have sufficient capital to invest in non-taxable, socially useful financial investments to avoid tax laws entirely, and they can use their time, talent, and energy to serve others.

  Contacting Congress:

  taxpayers have the power of their vote and can write, call, or visit their Congressional representatives until Congress changes the tax law to conform with the Constitution.

  Telephone tax:

  redirecting the federal excise tax on communications is a popular, easy, and low-risk way to put tax dollars to work for peace instead of war.

  Redirecting dollars from your federal income tax bill:

  federal taxpayers have control over some or all of their income and can choose to redirect a portion of their tax bill toward non-military, life-affirming purposes. This method provides a wide range of choices and can be best understood by contacting an experienced peace tax counselor. The Peace Taxpayers can help devise individual peace taxpaying programs.

  Continuing education:

  “The Peace Taxpayers organization maintains that the U.S. Congress has violated the highest laws of the United States by enacting a tax code which makes all income taxpayers supporters of war and preparations for war… Even though Congress has recognized the rights of conscience and made alternative service provisions in military draft law, it has not yet done so in the tax code. There is no logic in allowing a person to proclaim peace and then force them to pay for war! The Peace Taxpayers invite all to participate in its quest for paying taxes for peace on Earth.” Taxpayers can participate in the ongoing self-education and outreach programs of The Peace Taxpayers by subscribing to the organization’s newsletter… or by becoming a member.…

• “Penny Rolls” [sic] are a way of involving the U.S. public in a consciousness-raising exercise on how tax dollars are spent, and how taxpayers would like them spent. Typically, activists stand outside the Post Office on Tax Day, and invite passers-by to take part in the poll. The volunteers hand each person ten pennies, representing the tax dollar, and ask them to distribute the pennies among several jars, each representing an area of government spending. The activists then show them how the government actually spends tax dollars (a pie chart is useful for this). The activists keep records, and announce the results of the “People’s Budget” after the poll.
  
  The people’s priorities are typically quite different from the government’s. Many people are amazed to see just how big a portion of their hard-earned money goes to pay for war, and how little for crucial areas like health, education, housing, and jobs. That’s a good time to hand them a petition or letter to sign, or suggest that they can take action in other ways.

In August, Oliver Hydon was arrested in one of those symbolic trespassing style civil disobedience actions in the lobby of a military contractor. The court speech he gave in his defense the following month was later reprinted in the Journal and included this remark:

[W]e are far from helpless. Mahatma Gandhi’s example of noncooperation is open to us all. I am determined not to pay a cent to the Pentagon, and so I refuse to pay any and all federal taxes, and give this money I owe directly to the people who need it.

In the November issue, Anne Morrison Welsh penned a tribute to her husband Norman Morrison, who killed himself in a protest against the Vietnam War in 1965 (see ♇ 13 July 2013). She mentioned that before Morrison’s death, “[f]or several years we had been withholding whatever ‘war tax’ we owed from our IRS returns.”

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 govemment). 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 1991

War tax resistance had largely retreated into the back pages of the Friends Journal by 1991. Why this should be, I don’t know. Perhaps the winding down of the cold war made the issue seem less crucial, or perhaps the momentum from the Vietnam War era war tax resistance surge had finally sputtered to a halt, or maybe it was just a feeling that the issue had been discussed to an impasse and readers were fatigued and eager to move on to another topic, or it could be that the “peace tax fund” campaign had convinced people that the dilemma of Quakers paying for war would soon be a thing of the past.

The March issue briefly noted the publication of a new NWTRCC practical war tax resistance pamphlet “on how to prevent withholding of tax from wages.”

Frances S. Eliot penned an article for the April issue that described a tax day vigil the previous year in Ann Arbor, Michigan:

Holy Week at the IRS

During and since the Vietnam War, war tax dissidents in Ann Arbor, Michigan have held vigils on April 15 from 8 p.m. to midnight, with leaflets, posters, and banners, outside the main post office, which stayed open to postmark last-minute income tax returns. The weather was frequently dark, cold, and sleeting; but through the years, public response became less hostile and more favorable. We usually got a photo and brief paragraph in the local newspaper.

In 1990, a small circle of us decided to upgrade our customary tax day witness. We were inspired by the 1982 success of the War Resisters League in establishing the right to leaflet within New York City IRS offices; we were encouraged by growth of local peace groups and nonviolent direct actions; and the fact that Easter fell on April 15, tax day, presented a symbolic opportunity we couldn’t resist.

The Lessons Learned:

1. Be persistent. If a course of action seems right and necessary, expect aggravation and boredom along the way — but hang in there.
2. Document your communications and actions. An accurate record is important.
3. Pay "courtesy calls" on your law enforcement agencies. Inform them of your goals and plans. Know that part of their job may be to dissuade you from actions they feel may cause trouble.
4. Check details of procedures, penalties, and possible legal expenses with a sympathetic lawyer.
5. When dealing with a bureaucratic system, avoid procedural errors. Respond to all details, whether they make sense or not. Don’t assume there is continuity of record keeping by the bureaucracy. Send copies of whatever you need to refer to: previous correspondence, ordinances, regulations, recapitulation of phone conversations.

Our immediate goals were to provide taxpayers with information about the federal budget and its military portion, and to offer alternatives, all at a time and place that would permit genuine discussion of concerns. We planned to distribute leaflets advocating the U.S. Peace Tax Fund Bill, which would establish conscientious objection for taxpayers.

We changed the location of our action from the post office, where we’d had official permission and friendly cooperation, to the Ann Arbor IRS office, located in a privately-owned office complex. We had previously been excluded from this building, grounds, and parking lot by the building management. We decided to offer information and to talk with taxpayers during business hours of Holy Week, and again on April 16, Easter Monday, the actual tax deadline.

Three tasks followed: First, we needed to pursue the application-for-permit procedure required by the General Services Administration for activities in/on federal property. Jurisdiction is fuzzy: is GSA, IRS, or the building management in charge? The ensuing communication with the Detroit GSA and IRS offices unrolled like a script by Lewis Carroll and Franz Kafka. On the advice of a local ACLU lawyer, I kept detailed records.

Second, we tried to assess the possible risks and penalties of our witness, in case a permit were not granted. Again, who was in charge — Ann Arbor city police? county sheriffs deputies? federal marshalls? Richard Cleaver, AFSC Peace Education secretary, gave us an evening of training in nonviolent civil disobedience.

Third, we recruited enough people to keep the leafleting going, two or three volunteers at a time, four hours a day, even if there were to be arrests. (In such case our goals would expand from war-tax resistance to include First Amendment rights.)

Monday morning, April 9, the day after Palm Sunday, I dumped everything unnecessary from my purse and pockets, and caught the bus out to the IRS office. I had barely spoken a few words and handed a Peace Tax Fund leaflet to a woman waiting to see an IRS consultant, when an IRS officer came out of an inner office and said we absolutely could not be permitted to distribute leaflets or initiate conversations with taxpayers in the reception area.

I explained that I’d been trying since February to get the necessary permit, had complied with all GSA requirements, responded to GSA’s objections, filed an amended application, and still had received no definitive response. The officer, without comment, offered an attractive solution, which he had cleared with the building management: So long as we did not obstruct or harrass persons entering and leaving the IRS office, we could leaflet and converse with them in the corridor immediately outside the office door.

We accepted the offer. During this busy tax season, a rack of the standard IRS forms had been moved into the corridor for the convenience of taxpayers who only needed to pick up forms. The corridor area was thus functioning as a temporary extension of the IRS office and was a logical and appropriate place for us to offer additional information on where tax dollars go and what can be done about it. In whatever way a deal had been made between IRS and the building management, it was a neat example of creative conflict resolution. All of us were spared six days of possible arrests — which no one wanted — but which we were prepared for.

Holy Week, Easter, and Tax Day came and went. We had lots of interesting conversations, plus some mutually respectful arguments, with taxpayers. The Ann Arbor News carried a picture of the leafleting, and a good article on the Peace Tax Fund Bill.

Postscript: April 1991

That was then… this is now. We have taken a few breaths of post-Cold War fresh air, only to be propelled into a hot war in the Middle East. Opinions are increasingly polarized. However, on the assumption that the local IRS and its building management will continue their spirit of cooperation, we will proceed with plans for a week-long 1991 witness for taxes for peace.

Stay tuned!

Another note in that issue announced an “Alternative Revenue Service organizing kit” put out jointly by NWTRCC, the War Resisters League, and the Conscience and Military Tax Campaign, and designed to facilitate “immediate action to oppose the war machine that survives on our tax money.”

[The] kit provides a 1990 EZ Peace Income Tax Form, action ideas, an explanatory brochure, a camera-ready flyer and ads, background papers, and a resource list. The 1990 EZ Peace Income Tax Form is a take-off on IRS’s 1040EZ form. The alternative form begins with a section in which the taxpayer figures the amount of his or her taxes that will go toward military spending. It then offers a choice of areas in which the money might be re-directed, such as education and culture, international conflict resolution, human resources, environment, or justice. The form provides a space in which to choose an amount to withhold from the IRS, from $1 to the full amount of income taxes. The forms are to be filled out and mailed to the IRS, with one’s income tax return, to Congressional representatives and senators, to organizers of the campaign, and to friends and neighbors.

A book review in the July issue mentioned Milton Mayer’s war tax resistance:

Milton Mayer refused to kill and refused to pay others to do what he would not do himself. He recognized the futility of withholding his taxes from war expenditures, but argued that “the inevitability of any evil is not the point. The point is my subornation of it.” Knowing that the government would ultimtely force him to pay war taxes, Mayer defended his integrity: “If a robber ties me up and robs me, I have not become a robber.”

That issue also announced that a “Peace Taxpayers Newsletter” was being published out of Nellysford, Virginia, covering “subjects of interest to war tax resisters and others concerned with the tax money that supports military efforts. A recent issue describes how some people in Virginia are redirecting their federal taxes toward their local government to finance a much-needed waste management system. The newsletter is available for no charge, although the group asks for donations to help cover postage.”

The August issue announced a new pamphlet — Peace and Taxes… God and Country — written by Chel Avery for the War Tax Concerns Support Committee of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. “[It] has many helpful suggestions for the structure, content, and process of a clearness meeting for individuals considering war tax refusal. The financial, legal, and emotional ramifications to the individual, the individual’s family, and meeting are discussed and listed for easy reference.”

And that’s about it for 1991, except for some minor asides or references to activities of the war tax resistance movement scattered here and there.