war tax – Engaging Peace

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.

[Note from Kathie Malley-Morrison: We have shared the stories of a number of controversial figures on our site—e.g., Howard Zinn, Rachel Corrie, Dalit Yassour-Borochowitz, Dahlia Wasfi, and Ross Caputi. We recently invited a guest author to submit an essay on Golda Meir, which generated considerable valuable controversy.

Today we introduce another long-time peace activist, Ed Agro, who describes his anti-war activism. To learn more about Ed, read his autobiographical statement, as published in Forbes Magazine.]

Long ago, America’s war of the moment (Vietnam) was so flagrantly wrong, criminal, and inexcusable to anyone with a moral sensibility this side of Satan’s that a good part of the population was in an uproar. What with all the protesting and resisting, no one could get on with a normal life.

More in a fit of righteous pique than anything else, I totaled up the hours I was spending on various attempts to overthrow the State, assigned myself 10 bucks an hour, and on the year’s tax return claimed a business expense for the aggravation. That year my tax liability was respectable, and at the time the refusal seemed bold and dangerous. (Not so neither, it’s turned out.)

Maybe that particular act of war tax refusal was the one that brought a functionary to my door asking why I was not in compliance, so I told him. That’s how it went in those days. (When I mentioned to him that he may as well throw phone-tax refusal into the liabilities he was complaining about, he was mystified, but a levy notice awhile later indicated that I’d encouraged him to do his homework.)

That war finally ended, in part because of suchlike exertions of the community of war tax refusers. Since I had conceived of WTR as a tactic to end that war, I abandoned refusal with the coming of the more-or-less peace.

Worries over legal repercussions and disapprobation by my neighbors lessened as the functionaries lost interest in me and my neighbors lost interest in wars that became less burdensome.

But abstinence didn’t last long as new enemies were invented and war has followed war.

Another Way to Struggle against Militarism: War Tax Resistance

A bold and dangerous refusal (Don’t wanna pay for war no more, Part 1)