The War Tax Protesters

If a thousand men 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.

Henry David Thoreau's refusal to pay his poll taxes, which would have supported the U.S. invasion of Mexico, earned him a night in jail in 1846. Today, tax resistance is once again becoming a lively philosophical issue. The best-known recent convert is Jane Hart, wife of Michigan Senator Philip Hart, who announced last month that she "cannot contribute one more dollar to purchase more bombs."

That does not necessarily mean that Mrs. Hart is destined to spend a night or so in jail. Up to a point, in fact, it is possible to practice tax resistance and more or less get away with it.

For those who refuse to pay all or part of their income taxes--1,740 Americans took that step last year--the Internal Revenue Service and the resisters have worked out a courtly minuet. Thus, such longtime resisters as Folk Singer Joan Baez file returns (not to do so is a misdemeanor) that fully report income (to report inaccurately is fraud). They then withhold all or a percentage of their estimated tax as "war tax credit." The IRS files a lien on their bank accounts and takes the money. Technically, this form of resistance constitutes willful failure to pay, punishable by a maximum $10,000 fine and one year in prison. So far, the government has chosen not to prosecute anyone from whom it recovers the money due, as it has from Miss Baez.

The conflict gets more complicated when withholding is involved. Some protesters have taken to claiming large numbers of dependents in order to lower or eliminate all withholding. But a few protesters who have tried this approach have been prosecuted. At least one is now serving six months for having claimed 14 dependents.

A safer and more popular form of symbolic protest, according to Robert Calvert, coordinator of the New York-based War Tax Resistance center, is to stop paying the 10% federal excise tax on telephone bills. The money involved is small, and the telephone company can't collect it. One phone company tried cutting off the service of a Mississippi protester. It was reinstated after she complained to the Federal Communications Commission. The phone company practice is simply to inform the IRS of the protester's refusal and take no further action. The number of phone resisters doubled from 28,760 in 1970, to 56,445 in 1971, and now the IRS has begun pressing efforts to collect.

It takes a lien for the few dollars owed and orders the protester's bank to turn over the money, for which some banks charge the depositor $5 to $20. If a bank account cannot be found, the IRS looks for other assets. In Boulder, Colo., Bob Marcus owed $ 1.25 in phone tax, whereupon the IRS seized his Volkswagen, auctioned it for $277, deducted the tax, and gave him the balance.

The Government claims that the war tax protest amounts to very little loss of actual revenue, citing the fact that the number of income tax protesters in 1971 was up only 92 from the year before. The resisters argue that, like Thoreau, they are fighting for a matter of principle. They also take a modest pride in the fact that their harassment has forced the IRS to assign someone at each major center to the task of "Viet Nam Protest Coordinator."

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