The bright red slices of pie on War Resisters League’s new “Where Your Income Tax Money Really Goes” flyer have shrunk well below 50% this year. For years we’ve been demanding a budget that prioritizes humanitarian and social needs over military spending. It almost makes us want to celebrate…almost. Biden’s budget proposal for FY 2023… Continue reading
I have been a war tax resister for many years. I withhold half of my income tax from the federal government and donate that amount to support the victims of war: refugees and veterans. I include a personal “statement of conscience” that explains my beliefs along with each tax payment. The federal government uses tax… Continue reading
I was going to write about something else, but here the world is today facing a dangerous time with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. I am beyond being able to know how it feels for the people in the region, but I know I share a feeling with millions of others of just being sick of… Continue reading
Some months ago I wrote a blog about how the IRS had improperly applied my estimated tax payments for 2020 to the earliest tax years for which I had an open balance. In that way they wiped out the balance from 2011 and part of it from 2012, thus circumventing the 10 year statute of… Continue reading
Refusing to pay taxes to avoid complicity in state preparations to commit genocide with nuclear weapons, long time British war tax resister Roger Franklin was sentenced to 28 days in Gloucester Prison (and a further 21 days in 1996). His run-ins with the tax collectors also led to bankruptcy proceedings against him. (From NWTRCC’s History… Continue reading
Recently there was a conversation about death and taxes on the radio. The conversation was in light of the recently released Pandora Papers, which exposed the hidden finances of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful people. In October, the International Consortium of Investigative Reporters (ICIJ) released over 12 million troves of documents revealing how heads… Continue reading
“What we say to a society of murder and racism is a very simple no. What we say to our brothers across this country and around the world is a very simple word. That word is RESIST!” — David Harris, at a 1960s antiwar protest David Harris is one of the featured draft resisters and… Continue reading
On September 1st, the US House of Representatives Armed Services Committee backed a proposal to increase military spending for the Department of Defense by $25 Billion. That total was more than the Biden Administration had requested of $715 Billion. The vote was 42 to 17 which passed in the Senate. Many have been raising the… Continue reading
Three letters arrived from the IRS within a week of each other. On the one hand this is rather exciting since the IRS has been quiet for the last few years, and I haven’t had much to report as far as consequences of refusal to pay. At the same time, it could take months of correspondence to sort out what they’ve done.
“You don’t know if it’s going to last two days or two weeks or two months. It certainly isn’t going to last two years.” That was Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld in September of 2002, almost a year after the invasion of Afghanistan and at the time the Bush Administration was building support for their… Continue reading
Part I Addressing the Harms in Our Neighborhoods Long time war tax resister Robert Randall introduced me to his hometown of Brunswick, Georgia by saying it was mostly known as a port town for automobile transportation; quickly followed by saying “not much happens there.” On April 4, 2018, 7 people entered the King’s Bay naval… Continue reading
The Pentagon Papers at 50 is getting a lot of attention and giving Daniel Ellsberg another chance to tell his story as well as talk about more recent releases of secret documents including his own. Ellsberg says he’s ready to go to jail again for his use of classified information in his 2017 book The… Continue reading
