History of War Tax Resistance
Refusing to pay taxes for war is probably as old as the first taxes levied
for warfare.
Up until World War II, war tax resistance in the U.S. primarily manifested
itself among members of the historic peace churches — Quakers, Mennonites,
and
Brethren — and usually only during times of war. There has been instances of
people refusing to pay taxes for war in virtually every American war, but it
was
not until World War II and the establishment of a permanent, centralized U.S.
military (symbolized by the building of the Pentagon) was the modern war tax
resistance movement born.
Colonial America
One of the earliest known instances of war tax refusal took place in 1637
when the relatively peaceable Algonquin Indians opposed taxation by the Dutch
to
help improve a local Dutch fort. Shortly after the Quakers arrived in America
(1656) there were a number of individual instances of war tax resistance. In
1709 the Quaker Assembly refused a request of £4000 for an expedition into
Canada, replying “it was contrary to their religious principles to hire men
to
kill one another.”
American Revolution
Most Quakers were opposed to taxes designated specifically for military
purposes. Though the official position of the Society of Friends was against
any
payment of war taxes. Property was seized and auctioned, and many Quakers were
jailed for their war tax resistance. A number of Quakers even refused the
“mixed taxes.” Up to 500 Quakers were disowned for paying war taxes or
joining the
army.
Following the war many Quakers continued to refuse because these taxes were
being used to pay the war debt, and therefore were essentially war taxes.
Mexican War
The Quakers reacted strongly to this war because of its aggressive nature and
the threatened spread of slavery posed by the war. Many, again, refused to
pay war taxes. However, the most famous instance of war tax resistance was that
of Henry David Thoreau. Although not a pacifist he was opposed to slavery, and
the imperialist and unjust nature of the war. His refusal to pay the
Massachusetts poll tax levied for the war resulted in a night in jail. This
whole
experience was recorded in his essay, “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience,”
which
has had a profound influence on many people since.
World War II
Until World War II the individual income tax was a minor part of the federal
government receipts (affecting no more than 3 percent of the population).
However with the introduction of the employee withholding tax in 1943, for the
first time a large percentage of the population was subject to the income tax.
The unprecedented amount of money being raised and spent for World War II
suddenly touched the consciousness of many pacifists, who up until the war were
not
required to pay taxes.
In 1942 Ernest Bromley refused payment of $7.09 for a “defense tax stamp”
required for all cars, and thus became the first known war tax resister in the
modern era. He was arrested and eventually jailed for 60 days. Though Bromley
and a few other pacifists did not pay income taxes during World War II, but
there was no movement of war tax refusal.
Post-World War II
In April of 1948 a conference on “More Disciplined and Revolutionary Pacifist
Activity” was held in Chicago, attended by over 300 people. The Call to the
Conference (signed by A.J. Muste, Dave Dellinger, Harrop Freeman, George
Houser, Dwight Macdonald, Ernest Bromley, and Marion Bromley, among others)
expressed a need for a more revolutionary pacifist program and action
techniques. Out
of this conference grew a new organization, calling itself the Peacemakers.
Their newsletter was titled Peacemaker. About forty people who attended the
conference stated their intention to refuse part or all of their federal income
taxes, forming a Tax Refusal Committee.
This Committee began almost immediately to publish news bulletins,
independent of the Peacemaker. The bulletins were instrumental in engendering
concern
and giving information on tax refusal. War tax refusal succeeded in achieving
nationwide publicity in 1949 with the issue of a Peacemaker press release
titled
“Forty-one Refuse to Pay Income Tax.” For almost twenty years Peacemakers
was virtually the only consistent source of information and support for war tax
resisters. The Catholic Worker, the Progressive, Fellowship, and a few other
movement newsletters and magazines, would occasionally print sympathetic
articles on war tax resistance.
Following World War II and up to the start of the Vietnam War only six people
were imprisoned for war tax resistance related issues: James Otsuka, Maurice
McCrackin, Juanita Nelson, Eroseanna Robinson, Walter Gormly, and Arthur
Evans. All had been found in contempt of court for refusing to cooperate in one
way
or another with the proceedings.
In 1963 the Peacemakers published the first handbook on war tax resistance,
appropriately titled Handbook on Nonpayment of War Taxes.
Indochina War
War tax resistance gained nationwide publicity when Joan Baez announced in
1964 her refusal to pay 60 percent of her 1963 income taxes because of the war
in Vietnam. In 1965 the Peacemakers formed the “No Tax for War in Vietnam
Committee,” obtaining signers to the pledge “I am not going to pay taxes on
1964
income.” By 1967 about 500 people had signed the pledge.
Then several events in the mid- to late-1960s occurred making this a pivotal
period for the war resistance movement, signaling a shift in war tax
resistance from a couple hundred to eventually tens of thousands of refusers.
A committee led by A.J. Muste obtained 370 signatures (including Joan Baez,
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, David Dellinger, Dorothy Day, Noam Chomsky, Nobel Prize
winner Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, publisher Lyle Stuart, and Staughton Lynd) for an
ad in The Washington Post, which proclaimed their intention not to pay all or
part of their 1965 income taxes.
A suggestion in 1966 to form a mass movement around the refusal to pay the
(at that time) 10 percent telephone tax was given an initial boost by Chicago
tax resister Karl Meyer. This was followed by War Resisters League developing a
national campaign in the late 1960s to encourage refusal to pay the telephone
tax.
In 1967, Gerald Walker of The New York Times Magazine began the organizing of
Writers and Editors War Tax Protest. The 528 writers and editors (including
Gloria Steinem and Kirkpatrick Sale) pledged themselves to refuse the 10
percent war surtax (which had just been added to income taxes) and possibly the
23
percent of their income tax allocated for the war. Most daily newspapers
refused to sell space for the ad. Only the New York Post (at that time, a
liberal
newspaper), Ramparts (a popular left-wing anti-war magazine), and the New York
Review of Books carried it.
Ken Knudson, in a 1965 letter to the Peacemaker, suggested that inflating the
W-4 form would stop withholding. Again, Karl Meyer was instrumental in
promoting this idea, which was adopted by Peacemakers, Catholic Worker, and War
Resisters League, among other organizations in the late 1960s. Inflating W-4
forms
also brought a new wave of indictments and jailings by the government — 16
were indicted for claiming too many dependents; of those, six were actually
jailed.
The number of known income tax resisters grew from 275 in 1966 to an
estimated 20,000 in the early 1970s. The number of telephone tax resisters was
estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands. Many groups were formed around
the
country including “people’s life funds,” to which people sent their war
tax
resisted money to fund community programs.
The popularity of war tax resistance grew to such an extent that the WRL
could no longer handle the volume of requests. So in 1969 a press conference
was
held in New York City to announce the founding of the National War Tax
Resistance (WTR). Long-time peace activist Bradford Lyttle was the first
coordinator.
Local WTR chapters blossomed around the country, and by 1972 there were 192
such groups. WTR published a comprehensive handbook on tax resistance, Ain’t
Gonna Pay for War No More (edited by Robert Calvert), and put out a monthly
newsletter, Tax Talk. Radical members of the historic peace churches began to
urge
their constituencies to refuse war taxes.
In 1972 Congressman Ronald Dellums (CA) introduced the World Peace Tax Fund
Act in Congress, which was designed to create a conscientious objector status
for taxpayers. The National Council for a World Peace Tax Fund was formed to
promote this legislation (later changed to National Campaign for a Peace Tax
Fund). The bill has been introduced into each Congress since.
During the Indochina War, war tax resistance gained its greatest strength
ever in the history of the United States, and on a secular basis rather than as
a
result of the historic peace churches, who played a very minor role this
time. The government did its best to stop this increase in tax resistance, but
was
hamstrung by telephone tax resisters. There were so many resisters and so
little tax owed per person that the IRS lost money every time they made a
collection. The cost of bank levies, garnished wages, automobile and property
seizures, and even the simplest IRS paperwork was simply too expensive to be
worth
it.
The Reagan Military Escalation
National WTR folded in 1975 with the end of the Indochina War. By 1977 war
tax resistance dropped to about 20,000 telephone tax resisters and a few
thousand income tax resisters. Then in 1978 some radical members of the three
historic peace churches got together to issue a “New Call to Peacemaking”
that
suggested war tax resistance as one way to oppose the arms race. The Center on
Law
and Pacifism was formed in 1978 to assist these and other war tax resistance
efforts, issuing the book People Pay for Peace (by William Durland) in 1979.
With the election of Ronald Reagan as President in 1980 and his call to rearm
the U.S., many more people began to resist war taxes. The IRS admitted the
number of war tax resisters tripled between 1978 and 1981. Like Joan Baez’s
tax
refusal announcement seventeen years before, a national stir was created in
1981 when Roman Catholic Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle urged
citizens
to refuse to pay 50 percent of their income taxes to protest spending on
nuclear weapons. Letters of endorsement of his stand were made by other
religious
leaders in Seattle and elsewhere around the country.
In 1982 the War Resisters League published the first edition of The Guide to
War Tax Resistance, which sought to provide a broad and comprehensive source
of information incorporating the out-of-print Ain’t Gonna Pay for War No
More,
Peacemakers’ Handbook on the Nonpayment of War Taxes, as well as new material
not included in either book. A fifth edition of the book came out in 2003.
About the same time, WRL began producing its annual “tax piechart” street
flyer,
which analyzed the spending of the Federal government while promoting
protests to military spending.
This renewed interest in war tax resistance, spurred on by the unprecedented
increase in military spending during peacetime, stimulated an escalated
response by the government. Though there have been only three criminal
prosecutions
of war tax resisters since 1980, the IRS shifted tactics and began seizing
property. In 1984 and 1985 after almost ten years of very few seizures, about a
half dozen automobiles and a similar number of houses were seized from war tax
resisters. Furthermore, in 1982 the government came up with a new civil
penalty which was specifically aimed at war tax resisters. Called the
“frivolous”
fine, it charged a $500 penalty against anyone who altered their 1040 forms
(e.g., by claiming a war tax deduction).
In an effort to coordinate the growing interest in war tax resistance, a
National Action Conference was called by WRL and the Center on Law and Pacifism
in
1982. Out of this conference the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating
Committee (NWTRCC) was formed. Every spring NWTRCC has issued press releases
announcing Tax Day actions around the country. In addition to a bimonthly
newsletter with the latest war tax resistance news, NWTRCC has issued several
brochures, produced a slide show, and published the War Tax Manual for
Counselors and
Lawyers.
The End of the “Cold War”
In 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall, followed by the collapse of the
former Soviet bloc, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Cold War
ended.
War tax resisters and others expected a major reduction in the U.S. military
and looked for ways to work in coalition with groups calling for a “peace
dividend.” However, a little more than a year later, George Bush sent U.S.
troops
to the Persian Gulf region, and war tax resistance groups were flooded with
calls from people saying that they’d “had enough!”
Also in 1989, the IRS seized and auctioned the Colrain, MA, home of war tax
resisters Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner; shortly thereafter, the home of
resisters Bob Bady and Pat Morse, neighbors of Kehler-Corner, was also seized
and
auctioned. Within hours, a support committee was formed. Significant articles
appeared in newspapers across the country. After their eviction in 1991, the
house was occupied by a rotating collection of affinity groups until 1992, when
the new owners forced their way in. A continuous vigil outside lasted until the
fall of 1993. Throughout this entire period, considerable publicity, actions,
and support were generated bringing a lot of attention to war tax resistance,
U.S. military spending, and the misplaced priorities of the government. Four
years later “An Act of Conscience,” a 90-minute film about the struggle,
was
finished.
Meanwhile, from 1990 to 1993 the Alternative Revenue Service (ARS) was
developed by the WRL and co-sponsored by NWTRCC and the Conscience and Military
Tax
Campaign. It grew out of a desire, shared by many war tax resisters, to have a
nationally organized campaign that would reach out to new communities in a
creative way, suggesting that even a token level of tax resistance is a
valuable
protest. During the 1990-1991 tax season, 70,000 EZ Peace forms – a parody of
the IRS’s 1040EZ form – were circulated. About 500 forms were returned and
over $105,00015 in resisted taxes were redirected to alternative funds and
other groups. By 1993, a decline in interest, made that the last season for the
ARS.
Numerous well-publicized cases of IRS abuse led to Congressional hearings in
1997 and 1998, and resulted in the IRS Restructuring and Reform Act. Among the
changes, were some reductions in interest and penalties, some restrictions on
levies and seizures, reorganizing the IRS away from a geographical structure
to one that concentrates on types of taxpayers (individuals, small businesses
and the self-employed, corporations, and tax-exempt groups), and a number of
more cosmetic (as far as war tax resisters are concerned) changes. The IRS also
cut back on the number of collection agents, liens, levies, and seizures of
property
In 1993 Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in an attempt
to accommodate individual conscience in instances where a person’s religious
beliefs may be adversely affected by the government. In the late 1990s three
court cases were filed by Quaker war tax resisters using RFRA and the First
Amendment guarantee to the free exercise of religion in an attempt to have
penalties against war tax resisters removed and permit them to pay only for
non-military programs. These cases were dismissed in lower courts, appealed,
then
dismissed again in the Second and Third Circuit Courts. In 2000 the U.S.
Supreme
Court declined to hear any of the appeals.
The “War on Terrorism” (2001-?)
Following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon, President George W. Bush began bombing Afghanistan and sent
in ground troops to topple the ruling Taliban regime in the name of fighting
terrorism. U.S. special forces were also deployed around the world to
countries including Indonesia, the Philippines, and Colombia.
In March 2003, the U.S. launched an all-out war against Iraq, a country no
proven role in the September 11th attacks. Adding to the tension, North Korea
has said it plans to resume its nuclear program. Historically, the level of
activity of the war tax resistance movement, as with that of the peace movement
in
general, rises and falls with national and international events. It is too
early to tell what the effect this new war will have on war tax resistance. If
the “war on terrorism” lasts a long time – as the President Bush has
promised
– then there is sure to be an enormous growth in the peace movement with a
major resurgence in war tax resistance.
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