The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (NWTCC); or

how to be passively active and not become a topic of discussion amongst your neighbors

   Tax season is coming! IRS forms have already begun arriving. It's a good time to discover how you, too, can join in--without necessarily arousing neighborly suspicions. An organization you can turn to for information about war tax resistance and support or for your own questions is The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee. The literature list is on the page with the newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter , where you can get much, much more information than I can give you here.

   Who is The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee?

   From their statement of purpose:

The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (NWTRCC) is a coalition of groups from across the U.S., formed in 1982 to provide information and support to people involved in or considering some form of war tax resistance (WTR). . . . We oppose militarism and war and refuse to complicitly participate in the tax system which supports such violence. NWTRCC sees poverty, racism, sexism, homophobia, economic exploitation, environmental destruction and militarization of law enforcement as integrally linked with the militarism which we abhor. Through the redirection of our tax dollars NWTRCC members contribute directly to the struggle for peace and justice for all. NWTRCC promotes war tax resistance within the context of a broad range of nonviolent strategies for social change, and is firmly embedded in the peace movement. 

There are many people who are refusing to pay for war; others insist that the government create a conscientious objector status for taxpayers. Why? Because about 50% of your taxes go to the war machine. Fifty percent, not the piddling amount George's boys cooked up by manipulating the statistics.
 
Total Outlays (Federal Funds): $2,251 billion 

HOW THESE FIGURES WERE DETERMINED--

"Current military" includes Dept. of Defense ($449 billion), the military portion from other departments ($114 billion), and an unbudgeted estimate of supplemental appropriations ($100 billion). "Past military" represents veterans' benefits plus 80% of the interest on the debt. [from . Cf., Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz, The Economic Costs of the Iraq War,] 

    What is War Tax Resistance? It is refusal to pay some or all of your federal taxes. War tax resisters not only refuse to pay their federal income tax, they also refuse to pay the federal excise tax on local and long distance telephone service. Didn't know talking to your friends could include developing all types of weapons of mass destruction, did you? But it doesn't have to be this way.

    War tax resistance is an act of civil disobedience with a long history. The most well-known war tax resister is Henry David Thoreau, who said, during the Mexican-American War of 1846-48, "If a thousand [people] were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them and enable the state to commit violence and shed innocent blood." Many who refuse to pay war taxes believe--some citing international law--this refusal is just. The federal government, however, considers refusal to pay taxes illegal and imposes potential consequences through the IRS collection system on those who don't like war. With the privatization of the IRS, these consequences could get bogged down in red tape or go the way of Homeland Security's no-fly lists. For most who resist, the dire consequences of voluntarily paying for war are far worse that what the IRS and government can do individually. Imagine, though, using government and corporate logic in your defense: Which crime is greater? Not paying taxes or supporting the killing of hundreds of thousands? Remember. . .Bush and the neocon Republicans made it so the rich pay very little in the way of taxes while the middle class and the working class pay heavily. In paying, we support not only the killing of others but our own. The rich do not serve their country.

History of War Tax Resistance

    Refusing to pay taxes for war is as old as the first taxes levied for warfare, though the level of activity of e war tax resistance movement and the peace movement rises and falls with national and international events. Up until World War II, war tax resistance was primarily found among members of the historic peace churches--Quakers, Mennonites, and Brethren--and usually only during times of war. But here have been instances of people refusing to pay taxes in virtually every American war. However, with the establishment of a permanent, centralized U.S. military after WWII (symbolized by the Pentagon) a true war tax resistance movement was born.

    One of the earliest known instances of war tax refusal was in 1637 when the peaceable Algonquin Indians opposed taxation to improve the local Dutch fort. Shortly after the Quakers arrived in America (1656), quite a number of individual instances of war tax resistance arose, such that, during the Revolution property was seized and auctioned and many Quakers were jailed, while 500 Quakers were disowned by their church because they paid war taxes or joined the army. The Quakers reacted strongly against the Mexican War because of its aggression against a sovereign nation and the threatened spread of slavery posed by the war. Henry David Thoreau, although not a pacifist, was opposed to slavery and the imperialist and unjust nature of the war.

    Until World War II, individual income tax was a minor part of federal government receipts, affecting perhaps no more than 3% of the population; however, with the introduction of the employee withholding tax in 1943, a large percentage of the population was subject to the income tax. This created an unprecedented amount of money being raised and spent for war that touched the consciences of pacifists who, up until then, were not required to pay taxes. In 1942 Ernest Bromley refused payment of $7.09 for a “defense tax stamp” required for all cars and became the first modern war tax resister. He was arrested and eventually jailed for 60 days. Up to the start of the Vietnam War, only six (6) people were imprisoned for war tax resistance: James Otsuka, Maurice McCrackin, Juanita Nelson, Eroseanna Robinson, Walter Gormly, and Arthur Evans. All were found in contempt of court for refusing to cooperate.

    War tax resistance gained nationwide publicity when Joan Baez announced in 1964 her refusal to pay 60 percent of her 1963 income taxes because of the war in Vietnam. Eventually tens of thousands refused to pay taxes: from 275 in 1966 to an estimated 20,000 in the early 1970s. The number of telephone tax resisters was in the hundreds of thousands. Many groups were formed around the country, including “people's life funds,” where people sent their war tax resisted money to fund community programs. It was during the Indochina War, that war tax resistance gained its greatest strength--on a secular basis rather than as a result of peace churches. The government did its best to stop this but was hamstrung by telephone tax resisters: there were so many and so little tax owed per person that the IRS lost money every time it made a collection. Even the simplest IRS paperwork was simply too expensive to be worth following up on resistance to war.