In light of the coronavirus pandemic, the IRS has taken the unusual step of extending the tax season to July 15 — a move that gives people more time to consider using the old, but often overlooked tactic of war tax resistance from the safety of their homes.
For most people tax season is a hassle — involving organizing paperwork, gathering receipts, slogging through indecipherable forms — but it’s hardly an ethical or moral quandary. However, war tax resisters see taxes through a moral lens. For them it is a time ripe with opportunities for civil disobedience, charitable giving, and sophisticated accounting in the pursuit of peace — and now public health — by refusing to pay some or all of their income tax (and even their employment taxes in some cases).
The tactic is most associated with historic peace churches, including Quakers and Mennonites, and Vietnam-era anti-war activists. As a result, the demographic associated with the tactic tends to be older, but in an age of never-ending wars, climate change and an escalating pandemic, it is now being explored by millenials and younger people.
The War Resisters League, or WRL, a secular pacifist organization founded in 1923, estimates that in fiscal year 2021, some 47 percent of the federal budget will be allocated to military spending. The budget (nearly $3.5 trillion dollars in 2021) is funded by income taxes, hence war tax resisters primary focus on refusing to pay income taxes.
There are a variety of ways to avoid income taxes, some of which are legal and others which are not. Resisters may choose to live under the taxable level ($12,400 for an individual in 2020), which is legal, while others choose to file their taxes and refuse to pay any amount owed, which is illegal. Some even choose to send the money that they would have paid in taxes to a charity or non-profit, which could be an attractive option for those wanting to redirect their money to support those risking their lives to respond to the coronavirus. A host of options between those two poles are outlined by WRL and the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, or NWTRCC, a coalition of groups and individuals founded in 1982 to support war tax resistance.
“It encourages you to question how you’re relating to other people and society,” said Rev. Jerry Maynard, a 26-year-old Independent Catholic Priest, founding pastor of The People’s Church, and NWTRCC board member, who has been practicing war tax resistance since 2013. “It makes you aware that you aren’t just a fleeting reality in this giant, expansive world, but you’re really a cog in the machine. [At the same time] you’re conscious, so you can decide whether you want to turn this way or that way or if you don’t want to turn at all.”
Hellbound and Down 