National War Tax Coordinating Committee

By guest author Erica Weiland

[note from KMM: One of the objectives of the Engaging Peace blog is to encourage activism in support of peace and in opposition to war. We strive to educate our readers about different approaches to activism. Today we offer a timely perspective from Erica Weiland, a guest author representing the National War Tax Coordinating Committee.]

taxprotesters — Tax Protesters
Photo by Ed Hedemann, provided by the author.

Year after year, the US government spends money disproportionately for war. Different organizations calculate military expenditure differently, but whether the figure is 27%, 40%, 45%, or 57%, a large chunk of your income tax dollars supports payments for current and past wars and treatment for veterans.

If you’ve ever marched in the street, written letters to Congress, organized civil disobedience actions, prayed for peace, donated to an anti-war organization, or complained about this country’s spending, you know something about putting your time, effort, and money into a movement struggling against war. Another tactic some Americans (and people elsewhere) have adopted is to withdraw their financial support from the government that perpetrates wars.

Methods of war tax resistance can be legal or illegal, on a wide spectrum of risk, with a variety of potential consequences.

Resisters can, for example:

*legally refuse to pay taxes by lowering their taxable income,

*commit an act of civil disobedience by refusing to pay some or all of the taxes owed to the IRS,

*refuse to pay the federal excise tax on local telephone service, which is historically a war tax.

People all over the United States, earning different incomes and in different family and life situations, practice war tax resistance.

Their motivations vary. Some resist

*for reasons of conscience,

*in hopes of growing a movement of war tax resisters to reduce or stop war spending,

*to create a legal precedent for “peace taxes” that can’t be spent for war.

The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee is the only national organization devoted to supporting and informing current and potential war tax resisters, helping people get all the information they need to make decisions about resisting war taxes. If you are tired of supporting the war machine with your tax dollars, check them out.

Erica Weiland is the social media consultant for the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee.

Correction: Uncle Sam wants your money unless you are among the country’s largest U.S. corporations (e.g., GE, Microsoft, IBM, Exxon, Chevron). As reported in that radical rag, the Wall Street Journal, 60 of those large corporations “parked a total of $166 billion offshore last year” shielding anywhere from 40 percent to 100% of their profits from U.S. taxes.

It takes taxes and bonds poster — Image in public domain

While avoiding payment of taxes in the U.S., these corporations relied on the U.S. government to protect their interests from, for example, those who object to extraction of their natural resources by American companies.

Today is April 15. You have probably filed your 2012 income tax return, but in the coming year it would be wise to attend to proposals being made by the President and Congress regarding who will pay taxes and how the money will be spent.

You may have heard about proposed cuts in Social Security and medical and social welfare programs. Do you also know that President Obama is proposing a half billion dollar shift of funds from nuclear nonproliferation programs to upgrading the U.S. nuclear program?

Are your priorities the same as the government’s?

Historically, Americans have found many nonviolent ways to protest or rebel against taxes they judged to be unfair or immoral.

In 1773, to protest the tea tax imposed by the English government to finance its wars, colonists in Boston dumped English tea into Boston Harbor;
During and after the Revolutionary War, many Quakers, Mennonites, and members of other peace-oriented religious denominations refused to pay taxes intended for military expenditures;
Henry David Thoreau refused to pay a toll tax levied to support the Mexican War, spent a night in jail, and wrote about it in the essay “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience.”
Since World War II, many individuals (e.g., Noam Chomsky) have formed groups to protest using tax dollars to finance war. You can learn more from the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (http://www.nwtrcc.org/ ).

War tax resistance may not be the right choice for you, but do consider this question: Are the issues raised here important enough so that you will make your own voice heard?

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology