Skipping Tax Bill Is One Way Some Are Protesting Iraq War

Each year, Rosenwald and his wife, a self-employed piano teacher, file a tax return but omit to pay a portion of their tax bill. Specifically, they withhold 30% of what they owe. This, according to the War Resisters League, an antiwar activist organization, is the portion of personal income taxes that the government dedicates to current military spending. (The official figure is 20%, according to the White House's Office of Management and Budget, based on funds collected through Social Security taxes as well as income taxes.)

"As pacifists, we can't bring ourselves to pay for those expenses freely," explains Rosenwald in a letter that he attaches to his tax return. Instead, he continues, he and his wife will deposit the refused taxes in an account where the interest on the deposit will be used for causes they support through donations to small grassroots organizations that do peace and environmental work.

Usually within a year, the IRS levies Rosenwald's salary or bank account and takes what it's owed plus penalties and interest.

It may not be an efficient way to curb the government's military spending, Rosenwald admits. But throughout the country there are an estimated 8,000 or 10,000 people who, like him, avoid the tax system in the same way.

War tax protesters have been around for decades: The longest publicized streak belongs to now 83-year-old Juanita Nelson of Deerfield, Mass., who has been refusing to pay income tax since 1947. But not surprisingly, the numbers — while always small — typically grow when the United States is at war.

Since the war in Iraq started in 2003, the number of folks interested in war tax resistance has been on the rise, says Ruth Benn, head of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (NWTRCC), a New York-based group that, since 1982, has worked to coordinate the activities of war tax resisters throughout the country. Although no hard numbers exist on how many tax payers are planning or have already become tax resisters since 2003, Benn looks for proof in the number of visits to the organization's web site. While the site used to get just 50 hits a day (before Iraq), it's averaged 500 a day since then. As tax time approaches, the site is now up to 1,000 hits a day.

Just how they approach war tax resistance varies. Some folks refuse to pay a portion of their tax bill. Others, like Benn, refuse their whole tax bill. Most war tax resisters also donate their unpaid taxes to charities they like, often in organized events on April 15 (or whatever date tax-day falls on, this year that's April 17).

No one knows for sure just how much tax resisters have refused over the years, or how much has been collected back, says Benn. Based on surveys the NWTRCC has done among its members, she estimates that in all, the IRS collects probably half of what war tax resisters don't pay. "I've certainly resisted more than they've ever collected, and I think that's true in terms of all tax resisters as a group," Benn says.

Benn, a resister since 1987, refuses 100% of her taxes. She believes that refusing just the portion that equals the government's war spending doesn't guarantee the government won't spend her taxes on war anyway, she says. She avoids IRS collections easier than others because the NWTRCC, where she works part-time as a consultant, doesn't honor IRS levies. (Technically, the IRS could try to collect from NWTRCC just like it collects from individuals — by taking the money out of the organization's bank account — but that hasn't happened, Benn says.) As for her other work, which she does on a freelance basis, she says "the IRS could send a levy, and in that case I'd probably just quit the job and find something else." It's what many war tax resisters do when their salaries get levied, she adds.

Like many war tax resisters, Benn doesn't own any real estate or other large assets, and keeps her bank account balances low enough to not collect any interest. (She does this so that the bank doesn't report her accounts to the IRS, making it easier to collect.)