Tag Archives ⇒ National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee

War Tax Resistance overview

April 15, 2004
· Martin Kelley

In hon­or of Income Tax Day here in the U.S., here are some links to sites on war tax resistance.
There are many ways to par­tic­i­pate in mil­i­tarism. The most obvi­ous is to per­son­al­ly fight in a war, but anoth­er way is in financ­ing its deeds. The Unit­ed States mil­i­tary makes up a huge por­tion of the fed­er­al bud­get. It is esti­mat­ed that 53 per­cent of income tax­es go to pay for past, present and future wars. Noth­ing else comes close to this expen­di­ture, and budget-cutting in edu­ca­tion, envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion and the social safe­ty net is a direct result of deci­sions to put the mon­ey into prepa­ra­tion for war. For more on the rea­sons for this form of protest, check out Nonviolence.org’s own “guide to war tax resistance”:http://www.nonviolence.org/war_tax_resistance.php and the very excel­lent “Phi­los­o­phy of Nonviolence”:http://www.nonviolence.org/issues/philosophy-nonviolence.php.
The “Nation­al War Tax Resis­tance Coor­di­nat­ing Committee”:http://www.nwtrcc.org/ is a coali­tion of local groups, alter­na­tive funds, con­tacts and coun­selors work­ing to sup­port, coor­di­nate, and pub­li­cize con­sci­en­tious objec­tion to the pay­ment of tax­es for war. The NWTRCC coali­tion protests a tax sys­tem that sup­ports war, and it redi­rects tax dol­lars to fund life-affirming efforts.
The “War Tax Resis­tance Penal­ty Fund”:www.nonviolence.org/issues/wtrpf is an orga­ni­za­tion that ties togeth­er war tax resisters and their sup­ports. When penal­ties are levied, all the con­trib­u­tors pay a small amount to help defray the resister’s costs. This is a way for to sup­port the prin­ci­ple of war tax resis­tance for those who don’t feel ready to resist themselves.
“Where Your Income Tax Mon­ey Real­ly Goes”:http://www.warresisters.org/piechart.htm is a pop­u­lar fly­er from the War Resisters League.
The “Nation­al Cam­paign for a Peace Tax Fund”:http://www.peacetaxfund.org/ advo­cates for leg­is­la­tion enabling con­sci­en­tious objec­tion to war and to have the mil­i­tary por­tion of objec­tors’ fed­er­al income tax­es direct­ed to a spe­cial fund for projects that enhance peace.
The “Friends Com­mit­tee on Nation­al Legislation”:http://www.fcnl.org/ and the “War Resisters League”:http://www.warresisters.org/ both reg­u­lar­ly com­pile sta­tis­tics about mil­i­tary spend­ing as a per­cent­age of income tax.
“Hang up on War”:http://www.hanguponwar.org/ is a cam­paign launched in Octo­ber 2003 by a coali­tion includ­ing WRL and NWTRCC.

Horses on a Trot?

December 8, 2003
· Martin Kelley

Almost a month ago I ques­tion a “newly-launched cam­paign of phone tax resistance”:http://www.hanguponwar.org in a post called “Beat­ing Dead Horses”:www.nonviolence.org/articles/000194.php.
Robert Ran­dall, a dear friend who I haven’t seen in far too long, wrote in last night explain­ing how the new cam­paign came about and some of its goals.
bq. Hi, Martin.
   I’m all for com­ing up with new tac­tics, and I think a lot of peo­ple have
been doing just that. This does­n’t mean, though, that we have to leave old
tac­tics behind if they can serve us. Nor should we assume that old tactics
are not new tac­tics for some.
   Inter­est­ing­ly, at its Nov. 2002 meet­ing, the Nation­al War Tax Resistance
Coor­di­nat­ing Com­mit­tee did in fact decide to shelve a “Hang Up On the SOA”
fly­er because the ease of tele­phone tax resis­tance was no longer there: with
the pletho­ra of new phone com­pa­nies and the unwill­ing­ness of the FCC to
apply its old rul­ings on the AT&T tar­iff to oth­er com­pa­nies, we felt that it
would be inac­cu­rate to pro­mote phone tax refusal as an easy, low-risk form
of remov­ing sup­port for war.
   Now, though, we have the pos­si­bil­i­ty, through a large phone tax
redi­rec­tion cam­paign and the Inter­net, to learn and gath­er togeth­er the
how-to-do-it infor­ma­tion on all these dif­fer­ent phone ser­vices. It may take
time, but it is far from impos­si­ble. In the process, a lot of edu­cat­ing can
be done, both of the pub­lic and of phone com­pa­ny employ­ees. ease of doing
it can rise and risk can be lowered.
   What I like about the Hang Up On War cam­paign (www​.hangupon​war​.org) is
that it did not orig­i­nate with a war tax orga­ni­za­tion. It comes from the
iraq peace Pledge, made up of a num­ber of peace groups, old and new. NWTRCC is avail­able to ser­vice the cam­paign, but the fact that “main­line” peace
groups are pro­mot­ing wtr is some­thing which, as you are aware, those of us
who are long-time war tax con­vert­ers have long desired. While sup­port for
this cam­paign was not unan­i­mous at our recent NWTRCC meet­ing in Chica­go, I,
for one, felt it a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to get peo­ple start­ed toward less
sym­bol­ic, real war tax redirection.
   True, the fed­er­al excise tax on phone ser­vice is no more directly
linked to war than the fed­er­al income tax, but it is also no less. One
strat­e­gy which I favor is to pro­vide as many avenues of ingress to resisting
war as pos­si­ble. This is one. We can cer­tain­ly come up with oth­ers, and
with bet­ter ones, but I see no ben­e­fit in dis­parag­ing what some are doing
for peace. For many peo­ple, phone tax resis­tance is a new tac­tic and a big
step. Let’s applaud what I see as a step for­ward, into any kind of
resis­tance, for groups which have often stopped short of such things, and
work with them to keep mov­ing ever for­ward. I trust you will be suggesting
to where that might be.
 peace and hope,
 Robert Randall