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War Tax Resistance in the Friends Journal in 1988
The third of Friends Journal 's special issues on war tax resistance came in 1988 , and the topic came up in several other issues besides.
An article by Mary Bye in the February issue showed how the arguments for war tax resistance were starting to break the bounds of the tax arena and take hold elsewhere. Excerpts:
In March of 1987 a letter from the collection department of Philadelphia Electric Company demanded payment for a backlog of refused rate hikes. I had withheld the 13.7 percent imposed to cover the construction costs of the Salem and Limerick nuclear reactors. Why did I take this stand?
Looking back over the years for the source of my action, I could see it springing from a long-time insistence upon justice, a small but growing willingness to risk, a perennial sense of grief for suffering, and a blossoming love of the Earth. These are the qualities of the spirit which began to unfold into action during the early days of the Vietnam War. Somewhere along the line, I refused to pay the war tax portion of my federal income tax. Later the Vietnam War ground to a halt when legislation ended financial support for it. Was it just a coincidence that our war tax resistance preceded this legislation? Or did citizens modeling the denial of monies not only support the growing disaffection with the war, but also provide a clue to a way to end it? We had perhaps unwittingly slipped into an old Christian strategy of living as if the Kingdom were here now, and, behold, it manifested a brave, new world, or at least the beginning of one.
War tax resistance seemed an appropriate base upon which to build a new witness of caring for the whole Earth.…
…With crystalline clarity I selected my own utility, Philadelphia Electric, and refused the rate hike for Salem and Limerick. After 1½ years of refusal, accompanied by monthly explanations, I received a warning letter from the collection department, threatening an end of service. The initial fright yielded to a decision to continue resisting and move as swiftly as possible to establish my independence from nuclear power forever.
I faced a new, expensive, complicated simplicity: photovoltaic cells, which produce electrical current when exposed to light, and which could free me from bondage not only to nuclear generators but also fossil fuel-fired reactors. As war tax resistance led me to a lower income, so rate hike refusal was pointing the way to lower energy demands. My living standard may drop, but the quality of my life soars. Meanwhile I have discovered that Philadelphia Electric is experimenting with photovoltaics in anticipation of the coming solar age. If the price is right, I could purchase them there. After all, nuclear power is the enemy, not the electric company.
This is the vision, but it is a dream deferred or rather only partially realized. Philadelphia Electric Company and Solarex, which manufactures photovoltaic cells, want to establish a demonstration project at my home that would provide between one-fourth and one-third of the daily demand here for electricity. The stumbling block is the cost, which would possibly necessitate a 35-year pay-back period. So I am circling the photovoltaic issue in a holding pattern like a plane above an airport. I am searching for answers to hard questions: such as what is the equitable balance between the cost of photovoltaics and the wattage generated? What is a reasonable payback time? If the cost is rock bottom right now, how do we gather funds? How do we secure state and government support? Are churches and meetinghouses able to model this kind of caring for God's creation? How do we dream this dream into reality? I would welcome your suggestions.
an ad in the February 1988 issue of Friends Journal
That issue also announced a February "Conference for Quaker, Mennonite, and Brethren employers, airing ways to deal with war tax resistance by employees. Sponsored by Friends Committee on War Tax Concerns and New Call to Peacemaking."
That conference was covered in the May issue in an article by Paul Schrag. Excerpts:
The question of how church organizations can help their employees follow their consciences — and how to deal with the risks involved for both employees and employers — were the issues that 36 Mennonites, Brethren, and Quakers struggled with at the meeting. The church leaders, organizational representatives and lawyers affirmed their support for individual military tax resisters and for efforts to seek a legislative solution by working toward passage of the U.S. Peace Tax Fund bill in Congress. They agreed to organize a peace church leadership group to go to Washington, D.C., to support the peace tax bill and to express concerns about tax withholding. They also agreed to help each other by filing friend-of-the-court briefs if tax resisters are prosecuted and by sharing the cost of tax resistance penalties, if necessary.
People from churches that refuse to withhold federal taxes for employees who oppose paying military taxes shared their experiences with people from churches considering adopting such a policy. The General Conference Mennonite Church and two Quaker groups are in the first category. The Mennonite Church is in the second. The meeting, held at Quaker Hill Conference Center, took place in an atmosphere of excitement generated by a gathering of people from different traditions who share a vision. One conference participant said it was frustrating that many members of historic peace churches are unwilling to witness against financial participation in preparing for war, although they are opposed to physical participation in war. Some said it was disappointing that so many people are unwilling to follow their consciences until the government, through the Peace Tax Fund, might allow them to do so legally. One quoted Gandhi: "We have stooped so low that we fancy it our duty to do whatever the law requires."
When a church or organization decides to honor employees' requests not to withhold their federal income tax, it assumes serious risks. Theoretically, a person in a responsible position who willfully fails to withhold an employee's taxes can be punished with a prison sentence and a $250,000 fine. An organization can be fined $500,000. But such penalties have never been imposed on legitimate religious organizations, nor are they likely to be, said two lawyers at the meeting. The usual Internal Revenue Service response to war tax resistance is to take the amount of tax owed, plus a 5 percent penalty and interest, from the employee's bank account. However, the IRS has not taken even this action against General Conference Mennonite Church employees who are not having their taxes withheld. They pay the nonmilitary portion of their taxes themselves and deposit the 53 percent that would have gone to the military in a designated account. The IRS has not touched that account since it was established after church delegates approved the policy in 1983 . All church personnel who could be subject to penalties have agreed to accept the risk.
Friends World Committee for Consultation, which has had a nonwithholding policy since 1982 , has had tax money seized, plus interest and penalties, from its resisters' bank accounts. Friends United Meeting adopted a non withholding policy last October . Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends is considering such a policy.
A representative of the Church of the Brethren said he would use input from the meeting to work toward developing a denominational policy on tax resistance.
Lobbying continues for the Peace Tax Fund bill… The bill would allow people opposed to war taxes to put the portion normally given to the military in a separate fund for peaceful purposes. The rest of that person's tax money also would be designated for nonmilitary use… Whether or not military tax resistance is effective, participants agreed that people's moral imperative to follow their consciences must be respected. "No conscientious objector ever stopped a conflict," said William Strong, a Quaker representative [and treasurer of the Friends Journal Board of Directors]. "But they had to explain what they did, and the vision was kept alive, and those ripples, you don't know where they stop."
A postscript noted: " 'A Manual on Military Tax Withholding for Religious Employers,' written by Robert Hull, Linda Coffin, Peter Goldberger, and J.E. McNeil, will be available later this year ."
from the cover to the March 1988 issue of Friends Journal
The March issue was the third special issue on war taxes from the Friends Journal .
It was prompted in part by the fact that the Journal itself had received IRS levies on the salary of its editor, Vinton Deming, who had been refusing to pay income tax since 1979 . The Treasurer of the Journal , William D. Strong, explained what was going on in the lead editorial:
The Friends Journal Board of Managers has twice been unable to honor the levy against the wages of our editor, Vint Deming, for unpaid federal taxes. In our most recent reply to the Internal Revenue Service we stated that:
It is not possible for us as a board to separate our faith and our practice: we must live out our faith.
Our earlier letter… refers to our 300-year-old Peace Testimony. To more fully describe that part of our beliefs we enclose copies of two sections of Faith and Practice, the book of spiritual discipline of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. ["The Peace Testimony" and "The Individual and the State," pp. 34–38, were shared.]
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. We know as well that other religious groups — Mennonites, Brethren, and others-are facing this same difficult dilemma. For this reason, many of us support the proposed Peace Tax Fund bill in Congress.
The board agreed at our meeting in November to make known this continuing witness, both individual and corporate, to you, our readers.
The dilemma is clearly not the Journal 's alone. Many Quaker institutions in the United States, Canada, and England have faced this challenge. Beyond the historic peace churches are Catholics, Methodists, and others who are considering the whole question of taxes and militarism. In February representatives of some 70 institutions came together at the Quaker Hill Conference Center in Richmond, Indiana, for a New Call to Peacemaking consultation on "Employers and War Taxes." This followed a December 1986 Quaker conference at Pendle Hill considering the same concern.
The Journal board has worked at and reached unity in this matter. We will continue to seek the light in the months and years ahead. For now, however, we would welcome the support and reactions of our subscribers and readers. If you'd like to share in this witness with your moral support, let us know. If you'd like to add practical support, we would welcome it, as we are establishing a Conscience Fund.
We don't plan extensive legal undertakings at this time, but we know that there can readily be some fees and costs ahead, as well as possible penalties resulting from our refusal to honor the levies from the IRS.
We look forward to the response of our readers. We feel that we cannot host writings in the issues of the Journal on peace and justice, on our testimonies and faith and practice, without, as an employer, living them out to the best of our God-given abilities.
Another article in the March special issue was an extract from J. William Frost's Tax Court testimony in the Deming case, in which he explained the Quaker war tax resistance practice:
The peace testimony has been a basic part of Quaker religious belief since the 1660s . The testimony has not been static; it has evolved over time as Friends thought out the implications of what it meant to be a bringer of peace.
Some of the most creative actions of members of the Society of Friends have come from the peace testimony. For example, Friends' primary contribution to world history is that they began and carried through the antislavery testimony. Friends became antislavery advocates in the 18th century , when they realized that the only way one could obtain a black slave was to take him or her captive in war.
Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn for religious liberty. Penn believed, and so did the early settlers, that to create a Quaker colony meant there would be no militia, no war taxes and no oaths. These were conceived to be part of religious freedom, and in the early years of Pennsylvania, there was no militia, and there were no war taxes and no oaths. At first, the Pennsylvania Assembly refused to levy any taxes for the direct carrying on of war. Instead, after 1690 when the British government requested money because it was already beginning its long series of wars with France, the Crown and the Pennsylvania Assembly worked out a series of arrangements. Those arrangements provided that the Assembly (then composed primarily of Quakers) would provide money for the king's use or the queen's use, but the laws also stipulated that that money would not be directly used for military purposes; i.e., there would be almost a noncombat status for Quaker money. It could be used to provide foodstuffs to be used to feed the Indians, or it could purchase grain or relieve sufferings. It would not be used to provide guns and gunpowder.
This policy of no direct war taxes, no militia, and no oaths, was followed in Pennsylvania from its beginning in the 1680s until the crisis broke out in France in the 1750s . In 1755 , a group of members of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting began the debate on whether Quakers should pay taxes in time of war. At this time, some of the most devout Quakers refused to pay a war tax levied by the Pennsylvania Assembly. And finally the yearly meeting agreed that those whose consciences would not allow them to pay the taxes, should not. So the heritage of Pennsylvania until 1776 was that government accommodated the religion.
The Federal Constitution allows for an affirmation, because certain religious rights are antecedent to the establishment of the government, and the government can and will accommodate itself to religious scruples of those people who are conscientious good citizens.
During the 19th century there was less opportunity for tax resistance because there was no direct federal taxation. The federal government was financed by tariffs, and the tariffs were used to carry out the full operations of government. (The major exception came during the Civil War, and here the main issues were military service and Quakers' refusal to pay a substitution tax.)
The main Quaker response to World War Ⅰ was the creation of the American Friends Service Committee. This organization was designed to allow those young men who did not wish to fight (conscientious objectors) to have an opportunity for constructive service (i.e., to provide relief and reconstruction in the war zone). Friends conducted relief activities in France, and then later in Germany, Serbia, Poland, and in Russia. The War Department accommodated itself to Friends. There was no specific provision in the draft law in World War Ⅰ for conscientious objectors. The War Department allowed those Friends who wished to serve in the American Friends Service Committee to be furloughed so that they could go abroad to participate in relief activities.
A second way in which the authorities accommodated Friends at that time was in relief money raised by the Red Cross for Bonds. Much of the Red Cross effort was for military hospitals, and Friends did not wish to support that effort. Therefore in Philadelphia an agreement was worked out whereby Friends contributed money or bonds which would be earmarked for the American Friends Service Committee or for relief activity rather than for direct war activity.
There were instances in World War Ⅱ of individual Friends refusing to pay war taxes, and the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting officially protested against certain war taxes, but the main movement against war taxes has occurred since 1945 . During the Cold War and particularly during Vietnam, war tax resistance has become a major theme in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting.
The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, since the 1960s , has regularly put a discussion of war taxes on its agenda. In many ways the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting position on war taxes is like its position was on antislavery before the Civil War: before 1860 , virtually all Friends opposed slavery. Today , virtually all Friends oppose military taxation. The difficulty in 1860 and in 1980 is that Friends are searching for a way to make their religious witness effective. What Friends want to do is somehow change the focus of a policy which they see as destructive of what is basic to their value system.
In summary, the position of Friends is that religious freedoms preceded and are incorporated into the federal government. Pennsylvania was founded for religious freedom, and religious freedom meant no taxes for war, no militia service, and the right of affirmation. Friends think that the federal government incorporated part of that understanding in the affirmation clause in the constitution, in the first amendment, and in the religion clauses in the Pennsylvania Constitution. Friends think that the government has in good faith tried to accommodate us in our position on military service, and what Friends are wanting from the government now is a like accommodation on a subject which is the same to us as conscientious objection: the paying of taxes which will be used to create weapons to threaten and to kill.
Deming represented himself next, in an article describing his "journey toward war tax resistance." Excerpts:
During a difficult moment [in the discussion over the Philadelpha Yearly Meeting's response to the Vietnam War] a young Friend stood and spoke with deep emotion; and his words went straight to my heart. It didn't matter, he said, what older Friends might say in support of him and his generation (though support was needed and appreciated, for sure); what really mattered to him was that Friends look personally at their own lives to see how they were connected to warmaking. If they were too old to be drafted (and most of us were) perhaps they could find other ways to resist the war.
About 20 years have gone by and I don't even remember the name of the young Friend who spoke in meeting that day, but his words had a profound impact on me. As a result of his ministry I decided to begin to seek ways to resist the payment of taxes for warmaking (what another Friend, Colin Bell, would term the "drafting of our tax dollars" for the military).
I should say that there was another motivating force at work on me as well. My work for Friends in the city of Chester was bringing me into daily contact with poor and black people. I was learning firsthand about a community — a microcosm of other urban areas across the country — that suffered the debilitating effects of chronic poverty, high unemployment, deteriorating housing, inadequate health care, and inferior public schools. I was witnessing the insufficient funding of a so-called War on Poverty in Chester while millions of dollars and human lives were being expended in a war against other poor people in Southeast Asia. I knew I had to do something to end my personal complicity in helping to pay for the war and to redirect these dollars to wage a more life-affirming battle against poverty and injustice here at home.
I soon discovered that it is hard to become a tax resister; there are so many basic assumptions about money and taxes that we have learned. We are expected to do certain things in our society: when we work, we must pay taxes — this pretty much goes without question. How else will programs get funded and bills get paid? And those who don't pay, well… there's an institution called the IRS that takes care of such people and will make them pay!
There are so many good reasons for not resisting taxes. Some of the ones I wrestled with are these:
I can't get away with it. IRS will eventually get the money from me anyway and I'll just end up paying more in the end.
It won't do any good. The government is too powerful and they'll not change their policies because of my symbolic act.
There are better ways to work for peace (i.e. writing letters to Congress, going to demonstrations, etc.)
There will never be a substantial number who will be tax resisters — it's simply not realistic.
Well, there's truth in all of these statements, but I had to start anyway. Not to do so had simply become an even bigger problem for me. So I began looking at the question of taxes for war and decided to start where I could, with the telephone tax. I learned that the federal tax on my personal phone had been increased specifically to help pay for the war. In talking with others who were refusing to pay this portion of their phone bills I learned that the risk was fairly small. No one I knew about had gone to jail or suffered any severe penalties (beyond having some money taken from a bank account or such). So my wife and I began to withhold these few dollars each month and include a note to the telephone company explaining our reasons. This became an educational experience for me. I started to get used to receiving the impersonal letters from the phone company and later from IRS , and I even came to enjoy the process of writing my own letters in response! felt good about not paying.
In the early 1970s I began to feel more confident. The IRS had not locked me up, or even taken any money from me, as I recall, so I gathered my courage and decided to take the next step — to resist paying a portion of my income taxes. At first I included a letter with my tax form in April and tried to claim a "war tax deduction" and request a return of some of the money withheld from my salary but with no success. The IRS computers were not impressed with my effort, and they routinely informed me that the tax code did not provide for such a claim. So I came to a decision: it would be better to have IRS asking me for the money each year rather than my asking IRS. So beginning in 1973 I began to seek ways to reduce the amount withheld from my regular paychecks. Though some tax resisters at that time accomplished this by claiming all the world's children as their dependents (or all the Vietnamese children), I decided to reduce the amount withheld by claiming extra allowances (which were authorized for anticipated medical expenses, etc.) and thus reduce the amount withheld.
Beginning in 1976 , when I started to work part-time at Friends Journal , and continuing until this past year , I claimed enough allowances on my W-4 so that no money was withheld from my pay. For several years as a single parent raising a young child, I lived very modestly, working just part-time and sharing living expenses in a communal house. During those years I actually got money back from the government when I had paid nothing. Since 1979 , however, after I remarried (and later had two more children) I started to owe money to IRS each year. So each year at tax time I would write a personal letter to the president to be sent with a copy of my tax form (not completely filled out, usually just with my name and address) explaining why I could not in good conscience pay any taxes until our nation's priorities changed from warmaking to peacemaking. I would usually send copies of my letters as well to IRS, my representative in Congress, and friends. Occasionally I would receive thoughtful responses, once from Congressman William Gray from my district, who is one of the sponsors of Peace Tax Fund legislation in Washington.
After a few years of this, IRS began to make some ominous threats and noises, followed by the first serious efforts to collect back taxes from me. I should say that I redirected some of the unpaid taxes to peace organizations and poor people's groups, some into an alternative tax fund, some into a credit union account to earn interest — and some was spent. On two occasions — once in 1976 , again in 1986 — I went to tax court. Each court appearance provided an opportunity to explain my witness more clearly, and to meet others in the community who were tax resisters or who wanted to be supportive.
My first day in court was in Raleigh, North Carolina, and was particularly meaningful. About 30 of my friends went with me to lend support. A local peace group baked apple pies and served small slices to people entering the courthouse next to a large "pie chart" that graphically showed the disproportionately small share of our federal taxes going to human services and the large piece to the military. A local TV station interviewed me and carried a story on the evening news. A wire service picked up on the story as well, and for several days I received phone calls from people throughout the South.
What occurred inside the courthouse was just as important. The judge was very interested in my pacifist views: At one point he ended the hearing and engaged in an extended discussion right in the courtroom of many of the peace issues I had raised. It became a sort of teach-in on the subject of militarism and peaceful resistance. Later both he and the young government attorney thanked me for what I shared and complimented me for effectively handling my own legal defense. (I had elected not to be represented by counsel.) Though the court eventually ruled against my arguments in the case — which did not surprise me — I feel that the whole experience of going to court was a positive one, as well as an educational experience for others. And though I was ordered to pay the $500 or so owed in back taxes, I never did — and no further efforts were made to collect.
IRS has been more aggressive, however, in recent years. Some funds have been seized from a bank account, an IRA was taken, and such efforts are continuing even as I write this article. Most recently IRS has levied Friends Journal for the tax years 1979–1982 for taxes, interest, and penalties totaling about $23,000. I am grateful that the Journal 's board has declined to accept the levies on my salary… and that the board as a Quaker employer both corporately and as individual members supports my witness.
I don't know what the future will bring, and frankly I try not to think about it too much. In the past two years I have changed my approach some. My wife and I have decided to file a joint return. Beginning this past summer the Journal started to withhold a little money from my paychecks following my decision to complete the new W-4. It seems appropriate just now that I devote my time to working on the earlier tax years and to finding ways to support others who are more actively resisting. I try to stay open as well to seeking other approaches to resistance from year to year.
What are some things that I have learned from all this? Perhaps I might share these thoughts:
Tax resistance is a very individual thing. Each of us must find our own way and decide what works best for us.
Resist openly and joyfully, and seek opportunities to be in the company of others along the way. When you go for an IRS audit, for instance, take some friends with you; when you go to court, make the courtroom a meeting for worship.
Don't see IRS agents or government officials as the enemy. Look for opportunities for friendliness, address individuals by name, be open and honest about what you intend to do. The IRS will soon recognize that a conscientious tax refuser is different from a tax evader.
What might work one year may not the next. Be flexible and remain open to trying different approaches.
Talking about money is hard, and it is discouraged in our society. I remember how embarrassed the grownups in my family were when one of my children once asked at the dinner table, "How much money do you have, grandpa?" Tax resistance helps us to remove some of these barriers, and this is good.
Sometimes our children can educate us, I should say, and provide simple insights to seemingly complex problems. Just as I was challenged by a young Friend to consider tax resistance 20 years ago, an IRS agent was once set on his heels by my daughter. During a lull in a long conversation about financial figures, Evelyn (only seven at the time) asked the agent, "Why do you make my daddy pay money for killing people?" The poor man shuffled his papers, turned beet-red, cleared his throat, and ended the meeting.
There were several responses to the March special issue on war tax resistance that were printed as letters-to-the-editor in the June issue:
Jim Quigley wrote in to express his "admiration for the act of courage and faith represented by the war tax resisters."
Karl E. Buff wanted to "encourage Vinton Deming to continue to resist" in the hopes that "[w]ithout easy access to huge sums of money our government would surely have to curtail its war-making propensities." He also put in a plug for the Tax Resisters Penalty Fund.
Eddie Boudreau suggested that someone set up a "Conscience Fund" that people could contribute to and that would help defray the legal expenses of folks like Vinton Deming.
Susan B. Chambers wrote in about her technique, which was to consult with a tax expert in order to get into the "zero tax bracket" and to contribute 30% of her income to charity. "I am pleased not to inconvenience my friends in taking this stand," she wrote, in what I read as something of a rebuke to those resisters, like Deming, whose resistance becomes an agenda item for their employers (though she didn't make this explicit).
Robin Greenler wrote to support the Journal 's resistance to helping the IRS collect from Deming. "The decisions are neither easier nor less important on corporate levels than they are on a personal level."
Ben Richmond wrote that, for him, the question of whether a tax resister would just end up paying more in the end (with penalties and interest added to the unpaid tax) was the one he found the most difficult. "I have never found it satisfying to think that the point of the witness was simply to satisfy my personal need for moral purity." But he looked into the early Quaker resistance to mandatory tithes for the establishment church and found that Quakers were willing to suffer having property seized worth several times the resisted tithes rather than pay voluntarily. He notes also that the Quakers eventually won that battle, which is to say there are no longer government-enforced tithes that everyone must pay to an established church. So, Richmond wrote, "I do not resist military taxes in the expectation or hope that I will succeed in keeping particular dollars from the hands of the military. But I do expect and hope that, insofar as my resistance is in obedience to the leadings of God, it will play its small part in breaking down the legitimacy of the warmaking machinery, as the early Friends broke down the legitimacy of taxation on behalf of the state church. I believe that in the end, Christ's way is not only right but effective, and will prevail. Our sufferings are small in the overall scheme of things, so I don't wish to be melodramatic. But, it seems to me that we cannot afford to follow Jesus for the short haul because in the short run, all that appears is the cross (which, after all is simply shorthand for suffering at the hands of a pagan empire). Yet, it is the cross which led to the resurrection."
In March , the Friends World Committee for Consultation held their annual meeting. They decided to retire their "Friends Committee on War Tax Concerns" and establish in its place a "Committee on Peace Concerns."
On 1 September 1987 Brian Willson had been run over by a train while blockading the Concord, California Naval Weapons Station in protest against American wars in Central America. A few days later, while recovering from his injuries, which included a fractured skull and the amputation of both of his lower legs, he issued a statement reasserting his continued commitment to nonviolent activism, which was reprinted in part in the March issue, and which included this section:
If we want peace, we can have it, but we're going to have to pay for it… Our government can only continue its wars with the cooperation of our people, and that cooperation is with our taxes and with our bodies. Our actions and expressions are what are needed, not our whispers and quiet dinner conversation.
In the May issue, Jonathan Lutz gave an overview of the situation of Quakers in Scandinavia that included this parenthetical aside: "(To my knowledge, only one Scandinavian Friend is a war-tax resister, but then, the very different political climate must be taken into account.)"
That issue also included this historical note, which it sourced to "the newsletter of Friends World Committee for Consultation, Section of the Americas":
According to a Canadian publication, For Conscience Sake , Russia was the first nation to establish legislation exempting pacifists from paying war taxes. "In 1820 , thirty British citizens were invited by Czar Alexander Ⅰ to establish a cotton mill in Tamerfors, which is now in Finland. James Finlayson, the manager, submitted a petition to the Czar signed by the employees from Britain, some of whom were members of the Society of Friends. The petition asked for freedom of conscience and religion to practice their own religion, and for exemption from military service, war, church taxes, and the taking of oaths." The Czar agreed to free Quaker manufacturers from taxes and support of the military.
This is the closest I've been able to get to a citation for this claim, and as you see, it's third-hand and doesn't refer to an original source. I have seen references to Finlayson's getting a charter from the Czar to set up his mill that included some tax incentives, but I haven't gotten any closer to finding a clear and authoritative indication that the Czar explicitly honored the conscientious objection to military taxation of Quakers at this mill.
A note in the June issue read:
John Stoner, executive secretary of Mennonite Central Committee, U.S. Peace Section, writes: "That little Scripture passage on rendering to God and Caesar has been misused for too long, giving people an excuse for going the wrong way on important questions of ultimate loyalty." So John has created a lovely poster with the following words on it: "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." The posters are available for ten cents per copy (a real bargain, Friends, we can learn something from our Mennonite friends about good prices).
An excerpt from Pearl C. Ewald's letter to the IRS was included in the June issue. Excerpt: "my conscience will no longer allow me to cooperate with any plans by our government to prepare weapons for mass annihilation. I know that such weapons of war are under the condemnation of God. Therefore, I am not sending in an income tax report. I am prepared to accept the penalty for this action, and I will try to maintain a spirit of love and consideration toward you."
illustration by Barbara Benton from the July 1988 issue of Friends Journal
The July issue brought an article by Eleanor Brooks Webb in which she described her family's telephone tax resistance, and damned it with faint praise. Excerpts:
Since March of 1967 , my husband and I have refused to pay the federal tax on our phone bill. This is an unheroic and inconsistent witness to our conviction that participation in war is wrong and that paying for war preparations and for others' participation is likewise wrong. The singular virtue of this small witness is that it is something we can do.
…The payment of federal taxes was the place where other thinking people could not evade their own complicity. We had long been convinced by such reasoning as Milton Mayer's: "If you want peace, why pay for war?"
But nonpayment of taxes was difficult. My husband was the breadwinner, and his salary was subject to withholding; the Internal Revenue Service usually owed us money at the end of the income-tax year. Nonpayment of tax was also illegal, and we're very law-abiding people; we try to stay within the speed limit, and we calculate our income taxes scrupulously.
When I first heard of phone tax resistance, I thought it was a foolish idea. The pennies of the phone tax were so trivial against the amount of the income tax! But discussion in Congress about the re-imposition of the phone tax made it explicit that the reason for this "nuisance" tax was the cost of war — the war in Vietnam — and the tax was all tidily calculated for us on each phone bill. The penalties for so trivial a flouting of the Internal Revenue Service would not likely be unendurable. This was something we could do!
an ad from the November 1988 issue of Friends Journal
The Webbs wrote a letter to the phone company with each bill (sending a copy to the IRS) explaining their resistance. They tried to redirect the resisted taxes to the UN (but the UN turned down the donations), and then to the Friends Committee on National Legislation. The phone company responded appropriately, by "notifying the Internal Revenue Service of what we are doing and giving us credit for the unpaid tax."
In the early years of this saga, IRS made some effort to collect the unpaid tax. We received notices of unpaid tax, and replied that we didn't intend to pay it. We received notices of intent to collect, and several times liens were issued against my husband's salary (for sums along the order of $4.73). We would get notices from the payroll supervisor that such a lien had been issued and they had no alternative but to pay it; and we would write back saying we were sorry they had been bothered with the matter, but we had no intention of paying the tax voluntarily, and we gave the reasons — it was another opportunity to say what our convictions were. A number of times we received notices of tax due that we couldn't reconcile with our carefully kept records, and we would write IRS to that effect and ask for an explanation of the assessment. This often stopped them cold. At least once when we were due an income tax refund, a few dollars were deducted from it for "other unpaid taxes," or something like that, which we assumed was derived from the unpaid phone tax. In the last few years we have heard nothing from IRS except an occasional, apparently random "notice of tax due," which we wearily ignore.
She complained of the annoyance of all of the letter writing involved — "we have probably eight inches of file folders filled with telephone bills and carbon copies of letters."
My husband and I aren't consistent in our witness. We haven't made the effort to get our MCI [long distance] service arranged so that we have control of paying the tax (instead of American Express, through which we are billed). I can't handle any more letters!
But if this is all we have energy and grace to do, then I'm glad we've followed the leading this far.
The September issue brought news of a new war tax resistance organization — "the Colorado War Tax Information Project" — associated with the Rocky Mountain Peace Center. This project ran an alternative fund that redirected $3,500 in war taxes to social programs between 1986 and 1987 . An obituary notice for Louise Benckenstein Griffiths in the same issue noted that she "refused to pay federal income tax toward American military efforts."
How you can resist funding the government → a survey of tactics of historical tax resistance campaigns → choose a small, easy, high-participation tax to resist → phone tax resistance
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Everything you wanted to know about the "phone tax" and how and why it is resisted.
Cindy Sheehan responds to the internet hawk on-line petition begging the I.R.S. to audit her: "I am thinking of signing it myself."
A Quaker posits an alternative future challenge about a hypothetical gasoline war tax. Also: a barter loophole that you can use to put off capital gains taxes. And: what happens when liberals first start thinking about war tax resistance?
Phone tax resistance goes mainstream, with an article in today's Smartmoney.com advocating it. Also: Just how big is the defense budget? It isn't easy to tell, but one intrepid budget-watcher crunches the numbers for us and tells us what he found.
The Dubya Squad went from the attacks on 9/11 to capitalizing on them by bringing the government and the media and the people on-board with their Iraq War agenda in a year and a half flat. Three years after that, the anti-war movement is still gathering massive committees to draft statements of purpose and plan more meetings to consider proposals.
More news from NWTRCC's national meeting in Las Vegas last weekend. Also: Dave Ridley gets cited for "Distribution of Handbills" after leafletting the I.R.S. office in Nashua, New Hampshire.
Google has added more text-searchable newspaper archives to the Web, and I go hunting for more information on the history of tax resistance.
Today, it's almost embarrassing how little attention the government pays to war tax resisters. Things were much different in 1971, when the government might send out a team of threatening agents to collect a $5.50 tax debt. Also: Aristotle begins to discuss the intellectual virtues, which might help him next time he goes out for breakfast.
In a 1971 article for The Progressive, Milton Mayer asks anti-war liberals why they're still buying My Lai. Also: Aristotle discusses Art as a method for discerning a variety of truth via creation.
Arnold Cuba, an undergrad at the University of Texas, started resisting the federal telephone service excise tax during the Vietnam War, and in 1972 had his VW seized by the I.R.S. to be auctioned off to cover $2.44 in resisted taxes. Also: the greatest value of Wikileaks may be measured not in any specific piece of leaked information, but in the disproportionate damage that leakage in general induces unjust, secretive conspiracies to inflict upon themselves.
How to resist the federal excise tax on your Verizon phone bill. Also: signs of moral engagement and disengagement, and how to encourage the former. And: Uri, Switzerland tried to tax "bobbed hair" in 1929, but women laughed it off.
The federal excise tax on telephone service has been a frequent target of war tax resisters. Here is an overview of the tax and the resistance strategy. Also: on this date in 1958, war tax resister Maurice McCrackin told the press that his lawyers were defending him against his wishes: "I do not recognize any appeal on my behalf… This is a moral, not a legal, struggle."
It took some guts to be a Japanese-American conscientious objector and tax resister in the years around World War II. Also: how the organized war tax resistance movement morphed in the time between the Cold War-era Peacemakers and the founding of NWTRCC in 1982.
Did you get me anything for "Support the Pentagon Day"? Also: the Irish resistance refuses to pay the "police tax" in 1884. And: the I.R.S. cracks down on phone tax resisters in 1968.
A feature on the Vietnam War-era war tax resistance movement does a better than usual job of capturing the history and breadth of the movement.
In 1972, the Central Conference of American Rabbis voted to begin war tax resistance to protest the Vietnam War. Also: The number of people who are renouncing their U.S. citizenship or giving up on their long-term residency continues to rise, extending a trend that began last year.
The New York Yearly Meeting of Friends rediscovered war tax resistance during the Vietnam War, and took strong stands both to resist as a body and to help individuals who were resisting. They still talk about conscientious objection to paying for war today, but in a much more vague and noncommittal way.
The I.R.S. takes war tax resister Cindy Sheehan to court. Also: notes from war tax resisters Ed Agro and Paul Leatherman. And: the I.R.S. shed 5,000 employees over the last year, mostly from their tax enforcement division.
Two magazine articles from 1985 focused on war tax resisters Larry Bassett and Karl Meyer.
An article from an April 1974 D.C. Gazette gives a snapshot of the American war tax resistance movement of the mid-1970s.
The Department of Justice loses 30% of its tax prosecutors. The federal government is bigger than you might think. Ed Agro on war tax resistance. And: a Mother Jones article from April 1989 on war tax resisters.
A new issue of NWTRCC's newsletter is on-line. Also: the Women's Tax Resistance League marches in the opening ceremony of the London Olympics.
Tax resistance campaigns sometimes choose a particular tax to resist, not because it is particularly offensive, but because it is easier to resist or the ramifications of resistance are less frightening. This is meant to encourage more people to begin resisting. Today I'll give some examples.
The December, 1968 edition of The Buddhist Third Class Junkmail Oracle promoted phone tax resistance as a Vietnam War protest, and gives some interesting details about the government (and telephone monopoly) response.
Author Kennett Love described the war tax resistance movement of the late 1960s, and his own modest participation in it, in a December 1969 article for the Washington Monthly.
War tax resister Richard Catlett, one of the few American war tax resisters to do time behind bars for his resistance.
The lesser-known of two large public rosters of war tax resisters during the Vietnam War, and some other artifacts from the American war tax resistance movement circa 1967.
Some examples of the rhetoric and demonstrations from when telephone excise tax resistance became a popular tactic in the movement opposing the U.S. war against Vietnam.
By April, 1970, the American anti-war movement had really hit its stride, and war tax resistance had become a mainstream protest tactic.
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 I.R.S. was trying to auction off, and in part because of the I.R.S. 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.
With its quotes and paraphrases of unnamed "officials" and its furious hand waving, this 1968 newspaper article on war tax resistance reads to me as a desperate attempt by the government to throw water on a spreading brush fire by means of a cooperative and sympathetic reporter.
A student paper's report on a special Philadelphia Yearly Meeting session on war tax resistance in 1969. Also: an idiosyncratic phone tax resister from 1962.
Some tales of Vietnam War-era war tax resister and activist Helen G. Alexander.
A shoot-out involving black poll tax resisters in Georgia in 1921. War tax resister Arthur Evans. And another tale of phone tax resistance during the Vietnam War period.
Many examples of tax resisting women, from suffragists to pacifists and anti-war activists to the Igbo Women's War, from the book "You Can't Kill the Spirit".
Things were really heating up by 1972, and regular coverage of war tax resistance and of Mennonite war tax resisters in "The Mennonite" reflected this. But the majority of Mennonites were not yet on board.
In 1973 the American war on Vietnam was winding down just when war tax resistance among Mennonites was heating up. Also: Lyle and Sue Snider cleared of tax evasion and contempt of court charges related to their war tax resistance.
1974 brought "The Mennonite" readers the news that The World Peace Tax Fund Act had been introduced in the U.S. Congress. It was like the "Civilian Bonds" of World War Ⅱ all over again. Would Mennonites conclude that they were off the hook and could wait for the politicians to do something about their complicity with war?
In 1979 an unusual session of the Mennonite General Conference was called, just to discuss war tax resistance, and in particular, to decide whether the Conference would support its tax-resisting employees by refusing to withhold taxes from their paychecks.
Coverage of war tax resistance really picked up steam in the pages of "Gospel Herald" in 1972, as the Mennonite Church became more enthusiastic about the idea. Also: peace tax fund legislation gets off the ground.
After the Mennonite Church General Assembly voted to begin war tax resistance as a body, the general board of the Mennonite Church tried to come up with ways to avoid implementing that decision. The 1990–91 issues of "Gospel Herald" tell some of the tale.
After a flurry of interest in war tax resistance in Brethren periodicals of the early 1960s, things simmered down a bit just as the focus of the tax resistance movement shifted from conscientious objection against nuclear-era militarism to protesting against the U.S. war in Vietnam.
In 1970, the debate that had been roiling in the Church of the Brethren spilled over into the more conservative National Fellowship of Brethren Churches, which also issued a statement about war taxes.
In 1971, Brethren were searching their history to justify their stands on war tax resistance, while a first attempt to pressure the General Board to sell off its federal government bonds failed to get enough support at the Annual Conference.
In 1972, the Church of the Brethren decided to divest itself of U.S. government bonds, in protest against war spending, but it drew the line against corporate phone tax resistance. Meanwhile, a tax resistance "teach-in" took place at Elizabethtown College, and even the Bible Monitor felt it had to take a stand against war bonds.
In 1973, a Church of the Brethren committee formed to study the war tax resistance issue released its report, which went nowhere near far enough for those promoting resistance. One said it was a "slap in the face of the tax refusers, but perhaps we needed it."
In 1984, two Brethren-linked groups started war tax resisters' penalty funds, and the Annual Conference considered two queries on whether or how Brethren churches should refuse to pay the excise tax on their phone bills.
Back issues of the "Catholic Worker" newspaper from 1951 to 1970 give us some good peeks at the development of the modern American war tax resistance movement, including articles by Ammon Hennacy, Ernest Bromley, Eroseanna Robinnson, and Karl Meyer.
Outside of the "Catholic Worker" there were other mentions of tax resistance in the Catholic press in the 1947–71 span, including an increasing interest in war tax resistance as the Vietnam War dragged on.
In 1973, the I.R.S. launched an attack on the Peacemakers group and its members Ernest & Marion Bromley, the U.S. government deported anti-war and civil rights activist Mike Cullin (in part for his tax resistance), and more U.S. Catholic priests became tax resisters. This from a variety of accounts in the American Catholic press.
The pages of The Catholic Worker in 1986—87 explained the state-of-the-art tactics of telephone excise tax refusal and income tax resistance and announced a war tax resisters' penalty fund for mutual aid.
How you can resist funding the government → the tax resistance movement → conferences & gatherings → Employers & Employees: Responding to Conscience, 1988
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In 1988 the Mennonite Church danced right up to the brink of committing to corporate war tax resistance, as other church bodies around them considered their own similar actions. But the anti-resistance conservatives were getting restless.
The Church of the Brethren stood firm and refused to honor an I.R.S. levy filed against pastors Louise & Phil Rieman in 1987, and the church's "Messenger" magazine also brought news of war tax resisters from other denominations.
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 Czarist Russia
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. Here are some examples.
Some historical and global examples of tax resistance → United States → Vietnam War, ~1965–75 → No Tax for War Committee protest, 1967 → Pearl Ewald
There was plenty about war tax resistance in the Friends Journal in 1980, but it seemed to involve tax resisting Mennonites as least as often as tax resisting Quakers.
Tax resistance in the "Peace Churches" → A New Call to Peacemaking
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In 1978, American Quakers, Brethren, and Mennonites got together in a "New Call to Peacemaking" — a campaign that continues today under the banner of "Every Church a Peace Church."
In 1978, American Quakers, Brethren, and Mennonites got together in a "New Call to Peacemaking" and vowed to support and encourage war tax resistance. Here's a report on the results of that meeting.
As the arms race ramped up in the early 1980s, a group of religious leaders including Quakers, Brethren, Mennonites, and a Catholic archbishop, called on Christians to refuse to pay taxes.
War tax resistance remained very much on the agenda at the Friends Journal at the beginning of the Reagan era of aggressive military build-up in 1981.
War tax resistance was a frequent topic of discussion in the pages of the Friends Journal in 1983, with an increasing emphasis on how Meetings as a body could engage in war tax resistance, and with at least one Meeting taking the step of recommending that all of its members begin resisting war taxes.
War tax resistance was found largely in infrequent mentions in the back pages of the Friends Journal in 1998.
In 1978, representatives from the Brethren, Mennonites, and Quakers met at Green Lake, Wisconsin, and issued a joint "New Call to Peacemaking" that promoted war tax resistance. Also: some confusion about upcoming Rebeccaite criminal trials.
The Great Forgetting that had shrouded the practice of Quaker war tax resistance for generations was swept aside in a frenzy of war tax resistance enthusiasm that began in the 1960s and continued through the 1980s.
Here are some more excerpts from issues of the Friends Bulletin from the 1980s, including a variety of tactics, a number of new resisters, and evidence of increasing national coordination of the war tax resistance movement.
Ronald Freund's book "What One Person Can Do To Help Prevent Nuclear War" gives us an assessment of individual and institutional Christian support for war tax resistance as it stood about 35 years ago.
A New Call to Peacemaking was an effort by concerned Brethren, Mennonites, and Quakers to revitalize the peace testimony that sets those denominations apart. It included a call to war tax resistance. Also: the State Department issued me a brand new passport in the face of a law passed in 2015 that says tax resisters like me should have our passports revoked.
Between the "New Call to Peacemaking" initiative and the ongoing study and debate in Mennonite congregations, 1978 was a big year for war tax resistance in "The Mennonite".
In 1980 the General Conference Mennonite Church voted to initiate a legal suit in an attempt to free it from having to withhold war taxes from its conscientiously objecting employees.
In 1988, Mennonite, Quaker, and Brethren leaders conferred on how to support war tax resisters in their churches, and out of this came "A Manual on Military Tax Withholding for Religious Employers."
A variety of Mennonite conferences met in 1978 for a collective consultation about the propriety of paying war taxes, and "A New Call to Peacemaking" urged the traditional peace churches to take a stronger war tax resistance stand.
In 1979, the Mennonite Church had the luxury of playing spectator as their cousins in the General Conference Mennonite Church wrestled with war taxes at a special conference. Meanwhile: a conservative backlash was organizing, and peace tax fund advocates were ramping up their lobbying campaign.
In 1980 there was a lot of discussion of war tax resistance, and a lot of individual Mennonite war tax refusal and redirection, but Mennonite Church institutions seemed more reluctant than their General Conference to take corporate stands supporting their war tax refusing employees.
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.
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.
A simmer of interest in war tax resistance led to occasional mentions in the American Catholic press in 1977 and 1978, but there was a noticeable lull between the end of the Vietnam War and the start of the Reagan administration.
Tax resistance in the "Peace Churches" → Brethren
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Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention, 24 October 1837, part 2
At the Church of the Brethren Christian Citizenship Seminar, speakers remind people that conscientious objection is for everyone.
I'm being very urban homesteader, Francois Tremblay is examining taxpayer complicity, Steven Schallert is exploring war tax resistance, Murray Rothbard writes about nonviolent resistance and the insights of Étienne de La Boétie, Carl Watner reexamines the Whiskey Rebellion, two Cato Institute scholars worry that we might be the U.S. military's next target, the Church of the Brethren remembers war tax resisters Phil & Louise Rieman, the Taxpayer Advocate says it costs Americans $200 billion just to do their taxes (not including what it costs to pay them), the local paper notices that it's way way cheaper to take the bus than to drive, alternative currencies enjoy some limelight, Europeans reject military spending, but the U.S. spends upwards of $50 billion a year just on its nuclear weapons program. Whew.
Between 9/11 and the beginning of the Iraq War, the New York Times covered the American war tax resistance and peace tax fund movements.
One of Gandhi's first experiments with satyagraha was a strike by Indian workers in South Africa to defeat a tax aimed at Indians there. Also: some conscientious objectors to military taxation gave their two cents to Congress in 1993 during hearings about taxpayer noncompliance.
Two statements from the Church of the Brethren on war tax resistance.
The I.R.S. sends me five very bland letters. Also: American "peace church" representatives confer about how to revitalize war tax resistance in their congregations.
Resistance to the "Constable Leahy Tax" in Ireland in 1888, and to the Social Security tax by Amos M. Brandt in 1938 in the U.S.
As the 1950s end, "The Mennonite" was almost as likely to counsel tax obedience as tax resistance, but a stirring of resistance was beginning that would break out into a storm in the decades ahead.
In 1983 the General Conference Mennonite Church regrouped. Having failed via lawsuit and lobbying to get permission to stop withholding taxes from the paychecks of their war tax resisting employees, they decided to go the civil disobedience route.
Mentions of war tax resistance became more ecumenical and international in "The Mennonite" in 1984, as the I.R.S. began to crack down on some war tax resisters with its new "frivolous filing" penalty.
In 1959 something snapped, and writers in the "Gospel Herald" began writing about war tax resistance as a possible Mennonite response, and considering the most proper ways to go about it.
In 1970, Donald Kaufman's book "What Belongs to Caesar?" came out, finding war tax resistance's place in the Mennonite and larger Christian traditions, and increasing its scriptural respectability. "Gospel Herald" writers reacted to this development.
I take a first look at how the practice of war tax resistance developed in the Church of the Brethren in the United States.
The Gospel Visitor began publishing in 1851. As I look through its archives from then through the end of the Civil War, I notice a concern emerge about government spending for war, and citizen complicity.
I continue my search through the archives of old Brethren periodicals to search for insight into the development of war tax resistance in this peace church, in this installment from the 1866–1875 span.
I continue to search through the archives of old Brethren periodicals for insight into the development of war tax resistance in this peace church. In this installment I look at the period from 1876 to 1899.
My search through the archives of old Brethren periodicals brings me to the early years of the last century, as the world was in a mad arms race toward World War Ⅰ.
How did the Brethren stick to their pacifist principles during World War Ⅰ and the Liberty Bond drives? Well, there's a story to tell, and it's not pretty, at least as far as one can see in the archives of Brethren periodicals from the period.
After the war hysteria of World War Ⅰ died down, did the Church of the Brethren regret how it had rolled over, betrayed its pacifist principles, and supported the war bonds drives? Eh… not so much.
In the years preceding the U.S. entry into World War Ⅱ, arguments in Church of the Brethren periodicals became increasingly critical of war taxes and war bonds, in a significant departure from what had happened in the World War Ⅰ period.
During World War Ⅱ, when it came to war bonds, many Brethren gave in and bought them, and many others were willing to buy war bonds as long as they weren't called "war bonds" — but at least that was a step up from how things played out in World War Ⅰ.
After World War Ⅱ, the Peacemakers began to organize war tax resisters as a group independent of the traditional peace churches. But the Brethren seemed very interested, and though commitment within the Church was still lacking, there was plenty of curiosity. Also: the statement of the 1781 Church of the Brethren Annual Meeting on war taxes and hiring substitutes in war time.
In the early 1950s, some Brethren war tax resisters began to emerge, identifying not just with traditional Church teachings on non-violence, but also on the example being set by Christian pacifists from other denominations.
In the mid 1950s, the Gospel Messenger continued to highlight war tax resisters inside and outside the Church of the Brethren, and resistance came to be seen as more of a mainstream position. Meanwhile The Pilgrim reproduced Daniel Musser's 1864 "Non-Resistance Asserted" which condemned tax resistance but also the providing of money to hire substitutes for military service.
In the late 1950s, the Gospel Messenger covered the war tax resistance of Maurice McCrackin, and the Church of the Brethren Annual Conference took on the issue of war taxes and decided to try to work out some form of legalized conscientious objection to military taxation with the government.
By 1960, it had become ordinary for Brethren to connect their taxes with militarism and the perpetuation of the Cold War, and readers of the Gospel Messenger continued to look for examples of people trying to find a way out.
In 1961, suddenly Brethren couldn't stop talking about war tax resistance. A back-and-forth about the subject kept the letters to the editor column hot throughout the year in the Gospel Messenger.
The war tax resistance debate continued to rage in the letters column of the Gospel Messenger in 1962. But the Annual Conference was noncommittal, and hoped to lobby the government for some sort of legal accommodation for conscientious objectors to military taxation.
In 1963, war tax resistance had become accepted enough in the Church of the Brethren that some people were considering it as a variety of protest rather than as a conscientious imperative. But still, most named resisters in Brethren periodicals came from outside that Church.
In 1968, the issue of war tax resistance was at the forefront of debate about Brethren doctrine in the United States. The Gospel Messenger hosted four authors who explained four different paths to confronting the question of taxpayer complicity with militarism.
In 1969, for the first time, a Brethren congregation began to resist taxation corporately, and the General Board assembled a policy statement on civil disobedience, which chose to remain mostly neutral on the question of war tax resistance.
In 1974, the war tax resistance issue debate mellowed to a simmer in the pages of the Messenger, while a new "World Peace Tax Fund Act" held out the hope of the future legalization of conscientious objection to military taxation.
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.
A "Christian Life-style Task Force" presented its report at the 1980 Church of the Brethren Annual Conference, and gave war tax resisters the encouragement they had been looking for.
In 1981, Brethren continued to resist war taxes, and a new "777 Club" campaign attempted to nudge non-resisters into a small, baby-steps form of war tax resistance.
War tax resistance was a frequent topic of discussion in the Church of the Brethren's "Messenger" in 1982, and one Brethren church began an alternative fund for redirected taxes.
In 1983, Brethren churches had to make tough choices of how far to go to support their war tax resisting pastors in battles with the government. At the Annual Conference that year, the Church approved a position paper recommending that congregations consider civil disobedience in such cases.
One of the best debates I have seen about the biblical basis for tax obedience or tax resistance was between Vernard Eller and Dale Aukerman in the Church of the Brethren's "Messenger" in 1985.
The hows and whys of war tax resistance continued in the pages of the "Messenger" in 1986, as Cliff Kindy made the case for voluntarily simplicity and living on an income below the tax line.
As the Cold War sputtered to a close during the Gorbachev era, the urgency went out of the war tax resistance movement — something I've also noticed in my recaps of Mennonite and Quaker war tax resistance — as can be seen by the reduced attention given to the subject in Brethren periodicals during this period.
The slowdown in mentions of war tax resistance in Brethren publications towards the end of the cold war accelerated further during the opening years of the Clinton presidency.
By the late 1990s, war tax resistance had almost disappeared from the Church of the Brethren's Messenger, replaced by vain hopes that the government would pass "Peace Tax Fund" legislation to ease the consciences of troubled taxpayers.
As the millennium came to a close, the chorus of war tax resisters that had sung so strongly in the Church of the Brethren through the sixties, seventies, and eighties faded to a handful of crickets, and then, finally, to nearly nothing.
Today I'll try to summarize what I've learned about the history of war tax resistance in American Brethren churches, after having searched through the archives of several Brethren publications.
Tax resistance in the "Peace Churches" → Mennonites / Amish → Robert Hull
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There were many mentions of war tax resistance in the Friends Journal in 1989, though without much urgency or enthusiasm. Quakers were encouraged, however, by the prospect of nonviolent resistance held out by the Beit Sahour tax strike. Also: some references to the Poplar Rates Rebellion in the archives of The Spectator which recently came on-line.
Debate about whether, and how, to resist war taxes continued in the pages of "The Mennonite" in 1981, a proposal to create a "sabbatical service" program for war tax resisters was floated, and the General Conference Mennonite Church prepared a lawsuit against the I.R.S.
The General Board of the Mennonite Church joined the General Conference Mennonite Church's General Board (I know. I know. This is totally confusing.) in pursuing the option to stop withholding taxes from their war tax resisting employees' salaries in 1985. On the other hand, the Mennonite Central Committee decided it wouldn't do any such thing.
Enthusiasm for war tax resistance seemed to be waning in "The Mennonite" by 1987, just as the first international gathering on war tax resistance and peace tax campaigns had taken place. The increased enthusiasm for Peace Tax Fund legislation may have been partially to blame.
By 1994, war tax resistance writing in "The Mennonite" was so rare that most of it fit in a single Tax Day issue in which the resisters Ed Olfert, Menno Klassen, Jane Pritchard, Don Kaufman, and Earl & Pat Hostetter Martin were profiled.
The debate about whether or not to pay war taxes, and about whether Mennonite institutions should be more accommodating of the requests of their employees not to have war taxes deducted from their salaries, continued in 1985, and edged ever closer to the Mennonite Church itself.
In 1987, it seemed to me I started to see a lot more content in the "Gospel Herald" bemoaning how "our tax dollars" were financing this or that government-sponsored horror without going one step further and suggesting how people could stop their taxes, at least, from being spent in that way.
Tax resistance in the "Peace Churches" → Mennonites / Amish → Janet & John K. Stoner
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Some profiles of, and quotes from, tax resisters in the press recently.
Mennonite war tax resisters today, a "Tax Tea Party Revolt" for legal same-sex marriage recognition in April, and weighing the pros-and-cons of simultaneous war tax resistance against federal and state taxes.
The Mennonite publication "PeaceSigns" focuses on war tax resistance. Also: the text of war tax resister Clare Hanrahan's tax day speech that cast out the MoveOn liberal vampires.
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.
A "Taxes for Life" initiative was briefly a craze among "The Mennonite" set in 1992. Meanwhile other Mennonites continued to puzzle over what it means to Render Unto Caesar in a nuclear age.
In the late 1990s, while some individual Mennonites were still enthusiastically resisting war taxes, Mennonite institutions were less interested in confronting the issue directly, and tended to only obliquely refer to the dilemma of paying taxes for war. Even institutions that officially supported tax resisting employees often indicated that no employees were asking for such support.
At the turn of the millennium, war tax resisters in "The Mennonite" seemed to be on the defensive, trying to fortify the practice against the Frequently Asked Questions of the reluctant.
As the first decade of the new millennium came to a close, some Mennonites wondered whether the Mennonite Church had come to be "at peace with war." Certainly they seemed to largely be at peace with war taxes, with some notable exceptions.
1981 was marked by heated debate in the pages of "Gospel Herald" about war tax resistance, while Mennonite Church institutions continued to struggle with whether or how to take a stand.
Hopes that the U.S. court system might recognize a Constitutional right to conscientious objection to military taxation were dashed in 1982, as the debate about war tax resistance continued in the Mennonite Church.
Between the distracting hope of Peace Tax Fund legislation, and a newly-organized conservative anti-tax-resistance faction, in 1992 the war tax resistance tide started to recede in the Mennonite Church. Among the symptoms of decay were pleas for new resisters to refuse some tiny, safe, token amount of taxes in lieu of more firm resistance.
"Gospel Herald" ceased publication as an independent magazine at the beginning of 1998, merging with "The Mennonite" as the Mennonite Church merged with the General Conference Mennonite Church. Today I'll show some of the final mentions of tax resistance in the magazine before the merger.
A new war tax resistance redirection fund is being proposed at the Mennonite Church U.S.A. biennial conference next month. It would breathe new life into a fund first established over 35 years ago but that has lately been dormant.
The American Catholic press in 1979 included news of war tax resisters in the United States and anti-abortion tax resisters in Canada and Italy, and the War Resisters League advertised its new "Tax Resistance Kit."
The "Don't Pay U.K." campaign launches its utility bill strike. The Mennonite Church U.S.A. honors war tax resister John Stoner. NWTRCC holds a nostalgic 40th anniversary conference.
Tax resistance in the "Peace Churches" → Mennonites / Amish
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Mennonites, atom bombs, Borgen values, unconventional thinking, and gasoline taxes (oh my!)
How did the Amish manage to get themselves exempted from the U.S. Social Security system? Also: Crispin Sartwell gives a conference of young Democrats a good talking to, and that's not all he's got to say.
Supporters rally to protest the jailing of war tax resister Russell Kanning. Also: how can someone who doesn't file a 1040 apply for a refund of those illegally-collected telephone taxes? And: new editions of the newsletters of NWTRCC and the War Resisters League. Also: a new section on war tax resistance from the Mennonite Central Committee web site.
War tax resistance among American Mennonites during the Revolutionary War. Also: tax resistance during the British women's suffrage movement, and a political cartoon from the Spanish-American War shows what happens when a jingo meets the "war tacks". It must be history day at The Picket Line.
A new edition of NWTRCC's newsletter is out. Also: Chris Hedges expands on last month's tax resistance pledge.
Fifty years ago today, Time magazine published an article about Amish resistance to the social security tax in the United States — a civil disobedience campaign that eventually succeeded in forcing concessions from the government.
A new video about government spending priorities and war tax resistance, put out by the Mennonite Central Committee. Also: seven million American children went missing in 1986, thanks to a change in the tax laws. And: Nepalese doctors stage a tax strike.
If your progressive friends aren't war tax resisters yet, this Daily Kos post and Chris Hedges column might push them over the edge. Also: the Mennonite Central Committee sets up a fund for people who want to redirect their tax dollars toward undoing some of the harm in Afghanistan. And: another flashback to the beginnings of the modern American war tax resistance movement.
The new health-care industry law includes concessions to the conscientious objection of the Amish and of people who oppose abortion. Meanwhile conscientious objectors to military taxation still don't get no respect.
A 1964 article about the Amish resistance to the Social Security taxes in the United States, and a couple other data points about the campaign. They were eventually successful in gaining a partial exemption from those taxes for the Amish, but it took over a decade.
During World War I in the U.S., an ostensibly voluntary war funding drive in which people were encouraged to buy "Liberty Bonds" was made effectively mandatory by a vigilante enforcement system that was even more ruthless than the government's.
An Amish bishop explains his church's position on refusing to buy war bonds. Also: Elizabeth Knight and Emma Sproson call the tax authorities' bluff.
My Shareable article about my tax resistance is topic #1 on the Porc Therapy podcast. Mayors in Italy's Northern League launch a tax strike. A Mennonite responds to the Lettermanesque 10 reasons Mennonites don't resist taxes any more. A government-funded video game based on Thoreau's "Walden" pegs the irony meters in the red. And: a photo of Ken Knudson burning his tax payment check in 1966.
Tax resisters sometimes form cooperative housing or business relationships that help facilitate their resistance. Today I'll summarize some examples of this that I have encountered in my research.
Income tax withholding or "pay as you earn" makes it difficult for people to resist paying income tax. Resisters need their employers to be willing to go out on a limb and resist alongside them. Here are some examples of employers who have done just that.
In addition to refusing to withhold taxes from the salaries of tax resisting employees, employers can also express their solidarity for such resisters by refusing to comply with salary levies. Here are some examples.
When tax resisters give away their resisted taxes to charitable causes, this defuses critics who claim they are selfish tax evaders, and also forms links between tax resisters and other activist groups.
When trying to bring new tax resisters into a movement, sometimes there is no substitute for addressing potential resisters individually: whether that be through letters, petitions, face-to-face meetings, or cleverly creative modes of engagement.
If more people evade more taxes, even if they do so for non-idealistic reasons, this both takes resources away from the government and increases the number of targets the tax enforcers have to pursue, thereby taking some pressure off of the resisters. Here's how to make that happen.
Some tax resistance campaigns have accompanied their resistance with petitions to the government asking it to change its policies or to rescind the tax. Here are some examples.
Tracking down information about Sander Katz, Edith Aldis, and Gerhard Friesen, American war tax resisters of the 1940s and 1950s. Also: Cornelia Lehn's successful quest to get her employer, the General Conference Mennonite Church, to support her war tax resistance.
What's happening on Tax Day 2013. Mennonites contemplate war tax resistance. Data on the underground economy. French heterosexual supremacists contemplate tax resistance. Even if they're caught, American tax fraudsters are incredibly unlikely to ever cough up their ill gotten gains. And: fifty years ago today, Barbara Deming lays out the case for war tax resistance.
Is the dilemma facing pacifist Quakers who are asked to pay a war tax best resolved by conscientious objection and civil disobedience, or by lawsuits and lobbying? Both approaches could be found in the pages of the Friends Journal in 1982.
Mennonite war tax resistance in 1969 and today, a conspiratorial look at the Republican plot to destroy the tax system, another highway tax portal in Brittany destroyed by fire, and a peek at tax resistance used in the Cypriot struggles of the 1950s.
News about American war tax resisters Jason Rawn, Juanita Nelson, and Elizabeth Boardman. Also: the U.S. Mennonite Central Committee organizes a tax redirection campaign to support Israeli conscientious objectors.
A new issue of NWTRCC's newsletter, with articles about the U.S. war tax resistance movement, tax resistance internationally, and the global anti-war and conscientious objection movements.
Announcing the next NWTRCC national gathering, news from a war tax resistance teach-in in San Diego, a look back at the pioneers of the modern American war tax resistance movement and how war tax resistance featured in the anti-Vietnam War movement, and more news and links of interest to war tax resisters.
Issues of "The Mennonite" from 1886 to just before World War Ⅰ show little concern for the conflict between paying taxes for war and traditional Mennonite conscientious objection to military service. It would take some time for Mennonite war tax resistance to reemerge.
Issues of "The Mennonite" during World War Ⅰ do not show any groundswell of interest in war tax resistance. Indeed the paper is downright enthusiastic about buying war bonds and stamps. This, though I know that there were Mennonites in the U.S who suffered for their refusal to buy such things.
Scruples about buying war bonds and stamps were still a minority position among those represented in the pages of "The Mennonite" between the World Wars.
As World War Ⅱ heated up, American Mennonites anticipated they would be called on to contribute to the fighting, and tried to decide how they would respond. One suggested that Mennonites quickly invest their assets in charitable endeavors before the government could requisition them for its martial purposes.
When the United States entered World War Ⅱ, American Mennonites feared a repeat of the World War Ⅰ experience, when many were persecuted for refusing to purchase war bonds. So they asked the government to sell them bonds that didn't say "war" on them anywhere, so they could buy too.
During World War Ⅱ the U.S. and Canadian governments sold "war bonds" and "victory loan bonds" to the public, and there was high pressure to buy. Mennonites convinced the government to sell them special bonds that, while the money went to the same place, made them feel like they weren't paying for war. How did that sleight-of-hand work?
As World War Ⅱ comes to a close, American Mennonites find that they have all but conceded to voluntarily funding the military in spite of their "nonresistant" creed. "[W]hat justification remains for us to continue as a separate denomination?" asked one.
In the post-war period, a non-sectarian war tax resistance movement emerged in the United States, and perhaps not coincidentally some Mennonites began to wake up to the implications of their "nonresistant" philosophy when it came to taxes.
Timidly but with plaintive curiosity, "The Mennonite" began to explore war tax resistance in the late 1940s and early 1950s while non-Mennonites were largely at the forefront of the emerging modern war tax resistance movement.
As the 1960s begin, the pages of "The Mennonite" show plenty of evidence that Mennonites were asking whether it was right for them to pay taxes for war, but not a lot of evidence that Mennonites were refusing to pay.
In the early 1960s, war tax resisters and the WTR-curious became more bold in the pages of "The Mennonite," but the General Conference Mennonite Church itself had a hard time coming to a consensus on how to handle the matter.
In 1963, Leo Driedger and John Howard Yoder tell readers of "The Mennonite" that it is time to take arguments about the propriety of paying war taxes seriously, and to decide how to respond.
In 1964, just as Mennonites seemed that they were poised to start resisting war taxes, a bunch of Brethren swept in with a tax resistance manifesto that leapfrogged 'em.
Mennonites opposed to war tax resistance, particularly in the Eastern District, began to throw their weight around in the late 1960s in the hopes of suppressing what was about to become a serious bone of contention in Mennonite circles.
The Western District Conference led the way in the Mennonite General Conference, passing a war tax resistance resolution in 1970 — possibly the first time an established Mennonite body had taken a public position on the issue.
In 1971 war tax resistance came out in the open, with the General Conference Mennonite Church overwhelmingly adopting a resolution saying "We stand by those who feel called to resist the payment of that portion of taxes being used for military purposes."
One of the most thoughtful critiques yet written against war tax resistance was part of the back-and-forth on the issue in the 1975 issues of "The Mennonite".
In 1976 the General Conference Mennonite Church began to wonder whether they could still call themselves a "peace church" while paying war taxes to the government for their objecting employees.
Before it was even really out of the gate, the General Conference Mennonite Church's suit against the I.R.S., which was intended to free it from having to withhold war taxes from its employees, was crushed.
Mennonite authors like Linda Peachey and Craig Morton delved into current and past Mennonite practice about paying taxes that would be spent on shedding blood in 1990.
Imagine what might happen if every single Mennonite refused to pay taxes for war. Titus Peachey imagined it, and shared his imaginings with readers of "The Mennonite" in 1991.
Issues of "The Mennonite" from 1999 show Mennonites still struggling to find the right method of confronting the problem of taxpayer complicity: some tried lobbying for Peace Tax Fund legislation schemes, others tried to get below the tax line by making large charitable deductions, and one family "taxpatriated" to another country.
In 2002 "The Mennonite" finally got around to reporting on the Mennonite martyrs who paid the price for refusing to buy war bonds during World War Ⅰ.
As the U.S. war on Iraq heated up, ironically talk of war tax resistance in the pages of "The Mennonite" continued to dwindle.
"How are we doing as a peace church?" the Mennonite World Conference asked in 2012. "Our tax monies are conscripted, and each year our church members pay for cruise missiles, smart bombs, and unmanned drones — with barely the slightest tinge of conscience, let alone a whimper of protest," was the reply.
"The Mennonite" is now on-line, but a search through its recent archives discloses little about war tax resistance. Also: I discover where the missing volumes of "The Mennonite" from 1934, 1935, and 1953 were hiding.
I sum up what we've uncovered from looking through 133 years of "The Mennonite" to search for mentions of war tax (and war bond) resistance and compliance. War tax resistance began to appear in the 1950s, built to a furious climax in the mid-1980s, and then fell away rapidly thereafter. How might this be explained? Was it just a fad?
Archives of "Gospel Herald," the journal of the Mennonite Church, stretch back all the way to the U.S. Civil War (when its ancestor publication "The Herald of Truth" was active). This allows us to compare Mennonite and Quaker attitudes about paying commutation fines or paying for substitutes.
After the U.S. Civil War, Mennonites continued to make more explicit and precise the contours of their "nonresistant" conscientious objection policy in the pages of "The Herald of Truth." But war tax resistance was still off the table.
As a new century began, "The Herald of Truth" merged with "The Gospel Witness" to form "Gospel Herald". Mennonites debated whether they ought to vote, or become entangled in politics and government in any way, but by and large they taught that paying taxes was mandatory for good Christians.
During World War Ⅰ, "Gospel Herald" archives show that the Mennonite Church was much more opposed to supporting the war effort through purchases of "Liberty Bonds" than their cousins in the General Conference Mennonite Church had been.
Between the world wars, "Gospel Herald" writers continued to defend the orthodox opinion that Mennonite conscientious objection stopped at the door of the tax office. Good Christians pay their taxes, even taxes that mostly pay for bloodshed, and that's that.
In World War Ⅱ Mennonites tried to find a way to chip in by buying government bonds without buying "war bonds." The "Gospel Herald" has a fairly thorough record of this effort. The "Civilian Bonds" that resulted were a sort of ridiculous fig leaf, but only a few Mennonites seemed to notice this, including John M. Synder who said Mennonites had fallen for a "specious line of wishful reasoning."
In the early Cold War period, the orthodox Mennonite opinion about the scriptural obligation of submission to government, and taxpaying in particular, began to erode. And Mennonites learned, in the pages of "Gospel Herald," about Christians from other sects who were practicing conscientious war tax resistance. Also: the imposition of the federal Social Security program led to tax resistance from the Amish.
1963 began with a bombshell, as John Howard Yoder's essay "Why I Don't Pay My Taxes" appeared in the "Gospel Herald." This prompted an avalanche of debate about war tax resistance through the first half of the year.
In the mid-1960s, the "Gospel Herald" seemed to retreat from discussion of war tax resistance for a while, until editor John M. Drescher reopened the debate with his 1967 editorial "Dare We Pay Taxes for War?"
By 1968, Mennonites felt left behind as the civil rights and anti-war movements erupted around them. How could the Christian vision of nonviolence and universal brotherhood move to the front of this parade? This made activist positions like war tax resistance seem more essential.
1971 began with a backlash against war tax resistance in the pages of "Gospel Herald," and it took a while for war tax resisters to find their voices again.
War tax resistance in the Mennonite Church was finally running on all cylinders by 1973, and "Gospel Herald" was reporting that process and helping it along with editorial support.
Duane and Esther Diller penned a letter to President Nixon in 1974, methodically explaining their war tax resistance in a way that could serve as a model for other Mennonite resisters.
Mennonite-inspired war tax resistance began to sprout in Japan in 1975, as the Mennonite Church in the U.S. and Canada continued to wrestle with the issue.
War tax resistance was on the front burner at Mennonite Church bodies and gatherings through 1976 and 1977, according to coverage in "Gospel Herald."
Somehow I introduce a profane description of Christian agape by William S. Burroughs into a discussion about the state of war tax resistance in the Mennonite Church in 1983.
The debate about war tax resistance continued at a simmer through 1984, and by the end of the year it was clear that the Mennonite Church would have to have the same debate about withholding taxes from its employees' salaries that had occupied the General Conference Mennonite Church the previous year.
War tax resistance was a hot topic of meetings and protests and study groups in Mennonite circles in 1986, but the Mennonite Central Committee seemed reluctant to take a stand.
In 1989 the Mennonite Church General Assembly would hold a long-overdue vote on whether or not to support war tax resistance as an institution. Also: on this date in 1971, a "War Tax Resistance Caravan" started out on a bicycle tour of New England.
In the early 1990s talk of war tax resistance in the Mennonite Church slowed to a crawl. It was only a few years back that such talk had risen to a frenzy, and the subject was a regular topic of debate in the Church. Now: not so much.
By 1995, not only was war tax resistance in retreat in the Mennonite Church, but congregations were even starting to admit active-duty members of the military as members in good standing.
I try to sum up what we've learned from more than 130 years of back issues of the Mennonite Church magazine "Gospel Herald" and its coverage of Mennonite debates over paying taxes and other government demands for war funding.
American Mennonites who refused to buy war bonds were victims of patriotic mobs and government persecution during World War Ⅰ, as told in Jonas S. Hartzler's "Mennonites in the World War, or Nonresistance Under Test."
I get another letter from the I.R.S. The Mennonite Church considers a new proposal on war tax redirection. Former official Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson starts a private nonprofit Center for Taxpayer Rights. And the international guerrilla uprising against traffic ticket robots continues.
London's "Extinction Rebellion" movement organizes a tax strike for ecological sustainability. Businesses in Pakistan shut their doors in an anti-sales-tax hartal. Human drivers assault traffic ticket robots around the world. And more news about the Mennonite Church USA decision to expand its war tax redirection fund.
A tax strike in support of #BlackLivesMatter. Ed Agro, co-founder of New England War Tax Resistance, has died. Boosting the Mennonite Church's war tax alternative fund. Tax resistance against the war on the home front. The human war on robot traffic fine blasters continues. And: a Quaker petition defying the militia exemption tax to the Confederate legislature in Virginia.
An upcoming Mennonite webinar will cover war tax resistance. War tax resisters in Spain issue an annual movement census. Peter J. Reilly shakes his head and concludes that not paying your taxes is a workable strategy. More attacks on speed cameras in France. And more hints the Democrats are planning to boost the I.R.S.
NWTRCC launches a "Refuse to Pay for War Sign-On Statement." The Mennonite Church U.S.A. calls for war tax resistance in its Statement on the value and morality of the 2022 U.S. defense budget. The number of Americans who formally renounce their citizenship hit new highs last year. José Luis Espert, a member of parliament, called for mass tax resistance in Argentina. And: The ragtag human guerrilla war against the robot traffic ticket camera hordes continues.
How tax resisters popularized bitcoin. "Symbolic" tax resisters explain themselves. The I.R.S. continues to take damage, sometimes self-inflicted. And: The international human war against the robot traffic ticket camera hordes continues.
Tax resistance in the "Peace Churches" → Quakers → 20th–21st century Quakers → Friends Journal
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A Quaker war tax resister during the Vietnam War contrasted his conscientious objection with that of people who recommended tax resistance as a protest tactic with this analogy: "We refuse to steal not as a protest against burglary — with consideration of how 'effective' we may or may not be — but simply because for us stealing is wrong."
A look through the back catalog of "Friends Journal" gives a perspective on the late 20th-century resurgence of war tax resistance in the American Society of Friends, which has only recently started to fade.
There are a few, revealing mentions of war tax resistance in the "Friends Journal" from its first five years of publication, 1955 to 1959.
In 1960, you can see evidence that the glacier that had covered Quaker war tax resistance since the American Civil War had begun to recede.
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.
In 1962, a Friends Journal article by Mildred Binns Young changed war tax resistance from an incidental curiosity of Quakers into an urgent question of Quaker practice.
Issues of the Friends Journal from 1963 show the beginnings of the reemergence of war tax resistance as a widespread practice in the Society of Friends… and also the first example of the backlash against it.
In 1964 the simmering issue of war tax resistance began to hit the boiling point in the pages of the Friends Journal.
Three people dominated the meager Friends Journal coverage of war tax resistance in 1965: Johan Eliot, Margaret Dungan, and Gordon Christiansen.
On 2 November 1965, an American Quaker named Norman Morrison went out to the sidewalk in front of Robert McNamara's office in the Pentagon and set himself on fire as a protest against the Vietnam War. His suicide stunned the Society of Friends and made urgent the questions about the moribund Quaker peace testimony. This is reflected by the increased attention given in the pages of Friends Journal in 1966 to the issue of war tax resistance.
By 1967, though there was still no consensus in the Society of Friends about whether paying taxes was the right thing to do (and if not, how best to avoid it), the issue had become impossible to avoid. The issues of the Friends Journal published that year reflect this, with most of them including at least a mention of war tax resistance or of the dilemma for Quaker taxpayers.
The momentum of war tax resistance continued to build in the pages of the Friends Journal in 1968, amid increasing concern for how to maintain a nonviolent stance in a country where the status quo is so violent.
In 1968, the U.S. government added a surcharge to the income tax bill, designed to pay for the Vietnam War — the most explicit war tax the government had yet imposed. When Quakers began filling out their returns the following year, some felt that to pay this tax was a step they were not prepared to take.
By 1970, references to war tax resistance in the Friends Journal had become more casual and matter-of-fact, but also less urgent and less thorough.
War tax resistance continued to come up frequently in the pages of the Friends Journal in 1971. One issue brings the first mention of the war tax resistance of Robin Harper, who will periodically appear in the context of war tax resistance in the magazine for the next forty years.
In the 1972 issues of the Friends Journal, more attention is being given to the practical concerns of how to best go about war tax resistance in a way that is most effective and that most honors the Quaker way of going about things.
Quaker war tax resistance methods and theories diversified and became more developed, as can be seen in the pages of the Friends Journal of 1973.
There were a couple of heartfelt individual expressions of beginning war tax resistance in the pages of the Friends Journal in 1974. Also: members of the Seneca nation blockade a New York expressway in 1992 to protest the imposition of state taxes on Indians.
By 1975 in the Friends Journal there is a lot less discussion of why people should resist war taxes, or whether war tax resistance is proper, and a lot more news about how war tax resistance is taking place, and what individual Quakers and Quaker Meetings are doing to resist or to support resisters.
I was a little too young to be much of an observer of the political scene, but I remember 1976 as being something of an orgy of innocent patriotism. The Friends Journal wasn't quite so willing to get with the star-spangled program. In particular, it intensified its coverage of war tax resistance during the bicentennial year.
War tax resistance kept charging on through the early 1977 issues of the Friends Journal, though there was some indication of post-Vietnam War war tax resister fatigue.
There was a noticeable lull in coverage of war tax resistance in the Friends Journal in 1986.
The question of how Quaker meetings and other organizations ought to respond to the tug-of-war between the I.R.S. and their war tax resisting employees was among the major concerns of Quakers in 1987, as can be seen in the pages of the Friends Journal.
Mentions of war tax resistance in the Friends Journal in 1990 tended to look back at resisters of the past, or to look forward to a time when a magic peace tax fund law would make the dilemma go away.
War tax resistance had largely retreated into the back pages of the Friends Journal by 1991. Why this should be, I don't know.
There were several mentions of war tax resistance in the Friends Journal in 1994, including an interesting interview with Paula Rogge, and contributions from resisters Vinton Deming, David Shen, and Perry Treadwell.
There were scattered mentions of war tax resistance in the pages of the Friends Journal in 1995.
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.
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 new millennium is upon us, full of hope and… whoops, there goes a terrorist attack and suddenly the U.S. adopts insanity as its national pastime. How did the Friends Journal's coverage of war tax resistance reflect this slide from hope to nuts in 2001?
In 2002 mentions of war tax resistance in the Friends Journal were few and far between, and included next to nothing about actual real-life American Quakers doing actual, honest-to-goodness war tax resistance.
It is 2003. The insane bloodlust of the United States has led it to embark on the shameful and catastrophic Iraq War. Surely there is no time like the present for American Quakers to recall their proud tradition of war tax resistance and refuse to fund the madness. Let's see if we can find any signs of this the Friends Journal.
In 2004, Quaker Meetings were still wrestling with whether to go on the record in support of war tax resistance, and, if so, whether to do so in an explicit, uncompromising way, or one that played it safe and left a lot of wiggle room.
In 2005, it became increasingly clear that the Iraq War was a catastrophe inflicted by madmen who would stoop to any lie to satisfy their bloodlust, and held no limits sacred — not even those on torture. How would those Quakers who were providing the funding for this disaster respond?
Quaker war tax resisters of the past and present made appearances in the Friends Journal in 2006.
The few mentions of war tax resistance in the Friends Journal in 2007 were mostly looks at war tax resisters from Quaker history, though there was some mention of Daniel Jenkins's ongoing attempt to get the courts to discover a Constitutional right to conscientious objection to military taxation.
After noting several years of dwindling coverage of war tax resistance in the Friends Journal, it was a pleasant surprise to see that the magazine devoted its March 2008 issue to the topic.
There was a bit of an anti-war tax resistance backlash in the Friends Journal in 2009.
The Friends Journal in 2010 included more indications of the different approaches to the war tax dilemma from Quakers in the New York Yearly Meeting and their counterparts in California, as well as an article from Harrison & Marilyn Roper about their experience with tax resistance.
In 2011, most of the mentions of war tax resistance in the Friends Journal were brief and retrospective. Among the resisters mentioned were Christopher Moore-Backman, Alfred Andersen, Stephen L. Angell, Robin Harper, and George & Lillian Willoughby.
There were a few scattered mentions of war tax resistance in the Friends Journal in 2012, including mentions of resisters Ken Champney, Kyle Chandler-Isacksen, David & Jan Hartsough, and Merry Stanford.
We're finally at the present day, having reviewed the arc in which coverage of war tax resistance in the Friends Journal built from near-silence in the late 1950s to a near frenzy by the late 1960s only to fade back to a low simmer by the early 1990s and then to the frankly moribund state where it is today.
A rundown of recent tax resistance news: war tax resistance in the Friends Journal is all in the obituaries column these days; tax resistance news from Spain, Thailand, France, and Greece; I.R.S. ineptitude makes the news again; the impact of the shutdown on government revenue; and the rising trend of taxpatriatism in the (that is to say, out of the) U.S.
Friends Journal reviews "American Quaker War Tax Resistance." Also: current war tax resistance news, including mentions of American war tax resisters Susan Cundiff, Peg Morton, Joseph Olejak, and Erica Weiland.
After a thirty-year renaissance of war tax resistance, the Society of Friends seems to have slipped into another Forgetting period. How did this happen, and what can be done about it?
American Quaker war tax resister Joseph Olejak writes from jail. Tax Day 2015 protests are coming up. Two Spanish activists form a shell company in an off-shore tax haven in a counter-capitalist stunt. And: are actors Greg Wise and Emma Thompson really refusing to pay taxes?
The Friends Journal has run a second collection of writings from Joseph Olejak's jail experiences. Olejak served a series of 26 weekends at Columbia County (New York) Jail as part of his sentence for tax resistance.
Tax resistance in the "Peace Churches" → Quakers → 20th–21st century Quakers → Mary Bye
Tax resistance in the "Peace Churches" → Quakers → 20th–21st century Quakers → Susan B. Chambers
Tax resistance in the "Peace Churches" → Quakers → 20th–21st century Quakers → Linda Coffin
Tax resistance in the "Peace Churches" → Quakers → 20th–21st century Quakers → Vinton Deming
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A 1972 Catholic-led tax strike against government tax preferences for secular public education in Cleveland, Ohio. And: the war tax resistance of Vinton Deming and his employer, the Friends Journal, twenty years back or so.
Tax resistance in the "Peace Churches" → Quakers → 20th–21st century Quakers → Peter Goldberger
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The first war tax resistance article of the 2007 tax season hits the wires. Also: why can the dwindling pro-war base motivate their representatives to take stands, and the growing anti-war base cannot? And: a letter to the "Won't Somebody Else Please Stop Funding The War in Iraq" coalition.
The war tax resisters from the Restored Israel of Yahweh are resentenced. Also: is war tax resistance "purely symbolic" or is it tactically useful?
In 2003 the I.R.S. sued the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting for refusing to garnish the wages of Priscilla Adams, one of its war tax resisting employees. (The Meeting is still holding out.)
Brief notes from the business meeting of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee. Also: another data point on the mystery of how American Quaker war tax resistance died out in the late 19th century.
Last night was the opening night of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee's national gathering in Richmond, Indiana.
Reports from the workshops and the keynote speech at the National Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee's national gathering in Richmond, Indiana.
A climate emergency tax strike begins in the U.K., and a seminar about the history of tax objection there. The Biden administration wants banks to report details about everyone's bank accounts to the I.R.S. A separatist group in Catalonia launches a tax resistance campaign. An upcoming seminar about the legal prospects for conscientious objection to military taxation in the U.S.A. And some other tax resistance activity around the globe.
Extinction Rebellion U.K. puts out a video to announce the launch of its Earth Tax Strike. Also: Peter Goldberger on the legal prospects for conscientious objection to military taxation in the U.S., an interesting hack of California's tax system, a history of how the I.R.S. got into its current sorry state, prospects for the Biden Administration's plans to turn that around, a letter from a Basque war tax resister, and more tales from the human war on traffic ticket robots.
Will the new Supreme Court's increasing deference to religious scruples help conscientious objectors to war taxes to win their cases? A council tax strike protests a planned incinerator in North London. Banks will not have to rat out more of their customers to the I.R.S. after all. And a multi-year property tax strike continues in India's Electronic City.
The vigil protesting the seizure and sale of the home of war tax resisters Betsy Corner & Randy Kehler continued in 1993, and Bill Ramsey wrote from prison where he was serving time for violating a probation condition that was meant to require him to pay the taxes he had been resisting.
Tax resistance in the "Peace Churches" → Quakers → 20th–21st century Quakers → Louise Benckenstein Griffiths
Tax resistance in the "Peace Churches" → Quakers → 20th–21st century Quakers → Ben Richmond
Tax resistance in the "Peace Churches" → Quakers → 20th–21st century Quakers → William D. "Bill" Strong
Several examples of organized war tax resistance and redirection among Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Quakers in the early 1980s.
Tax resistance also took off in the French women's suffrage movement. Also: "tax day" newspaper articles from years past cover the war tax resistance of Maurice McCrackin, Bill Strong, and Irwin Hogenauer.
Tax resistance in the "Peace Churches" → Quakers → 20th–21st century Quakers → Eleanor Brooks Webb
Miscellaneous tax resisters → individual war tax resisters → J.E. McNeil
Miscellaneous tax resisters → individual war tax resisters → S. Brian Willson
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The new NWTRCC newsletter features articles about Brian Willson, Russell Kanning, and the dilemma for activist nonprofits who have to decide whether to be tax-exempt and put up with the additional government restrictions that entails. Also: a look at the new generation of nonviolent revolution think-tanks. And: the military and its wars are costing more this year than at the peak of the Vietnam war (and hundreds of billions of that spending are being "borrowed," quietly, from the Social Security trust fund).
Two war tax resistance films — "Paying for Peace" and "An Act of Conscience" — are released on-line. Also: the story of The Bezuidenoudt Affair, an act of tax resistance that triggered the first Boer War.
Activist S. Brian Willson was interviewed yesterday on KQED. Here is some of what he had to say about his tax resistance.
A new issue of NWTRCC's newsletter: Tony Serra on shit he will not eat, frivolous filing notices get out of hand, various resisters and resistance activities, and a penalty-sharing protester solidarity group in Iowa.
A new issue of NWTRCC's newsletter is out, with news about the national (and international) war tax resistance movement. Also: Daniel Ellsberg said he would not have released the Pentagon Papers if it hadn't been for the influence of war tax resister Randy Kehler. And: video of war tax resisters Jack Herbert and S. Brian Willson on the Veterans For Peace Forum.
Private collection agencies will begin to go after languishing I.R.S. tax cases next Spring. Also: a new issue of NWTRCC's newsletter is out.