Creating a Non-Violent World through War Tax Resistance
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| A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." -Martin Luther King Jr. |
| Visions of a Non-Violent World |
We live in a world where competing nations use war to force settlement of the differences among them and where central governments use military force against ethnic, religious, class, and regional groups. However, individuals around the globe are visualizing a world without such violent conflicts. In this new world, nations, and competing groups within nations, would deal with their conflicts non-violently. And citizens would train themselves in non-violent action as a means of resisting both external invaders and oppression by domestic authorities.
Such visionary individuals may use a variety of labels - Gandhian, pacifist, anarchist, decentralist, libertarian, Green, bioregionalist - or no label at all. Their goal is the same - world beyond war, a non-violent world.
War tax resistance is a powerful commitment to creating a non-violent world. It is a day-by-day reminder to ourselves and others of our struggle. And it is an effective strategy for dismantling the structures of violence and war. For it takes resources away from the military and redirects them to fulfilling human needs.
| Paying for War |
Despite the dissolution of the Soviet Union, arms reduction treaties, and cutbacks in military personnel, the United States still spends more than $300 billion a year on war. This spending ensures that the U.S. maintains superpower dominance and can intervene militarily anywhere in the world at a moment's notice. Generous military aid is dispensed to those governments which forward this goal, regardless of their records on human rights.
The United States government claims that all this military spending ensures world peace. But more and more of us are convinced that it means only more war, oppression, impoverishment, and environmental destruction. More than 50% of your federal income tax and your federal telephone tax go to pay for past and present military spending. How much are you paying for war this year? $500? $1000? $5000?
| Methods of War Tax Resistance |
War tax resistance is an act of civil disobedience. One should not undertake it without being informed of the possible consequences. Contact a war tax resistance counselor, local war tax resistance group, or NWTRCC for more information and support.
| Possible IRS Responses |
The Internal Revenue Service's responses to war tax resistance are not consistent. The IRS rarely responds to telephone tax resistance because the amount is so small. By regulation, telephone companies may not cut off service because of non-payment of the federal excise tax.
In response to income tax resistance the IRS may send tax due notices, charge interest on unpaid taxes, or assess penalties. It may send an agent to your home or workplace to request payment.
The IRS may acquire a lien on a resister's assets. Once it does so, it may then try to collect resisted taxes, plus interest or penalties, by attaching bank accounts, garnishing wages, or seizing property. Over the last 40 years the IRS has rarely chosen to criminally prosecute war tax resisters.
| Creating Non-Violent Communities |
Imagine redirecting your $500 or $1000 or $5000 toward creating a non-violent world. Many war tax resisters are doing that by donating resisted tax money to peace groups or to people in nations ravaged by war. Others are improving their communities by donating resisted tax money to food banks, shelters, health clinics and community organizing projects. They are investing resisted taxes in local banks and credit unions to rebuild local economies devastated by military spending. Such actions speed conversion from a militarized to a peaceful economy.
To go further, resisted taxes could be used to set up local centers to teach individuals and groups non-violent conflict resolution, non-violent action, and civilian-based defense techniques. People could use these skills to resist both domestic injustice and oppression and external military aggression.
Consider making this commitment to creating a non-violentworld. Join those of us who are redirecting our money away from war and destruction and towards peace and life.
Written by Carol Moore, assisted by Joe Maiziish.
