War Tax Resistance

Sometimes referred to as the peace tax campaign, the war tax resistance movement spans several centuries and continents. War tax resistance forms part of a much broader historical movement of revolt and resistance against what have been seen as unjust taxes. Withholding taxation for military purposes is now a central strand of pro-peace action among diverse Western and Eastern traditions of pacifism. The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee coordinates groups and actions through the Internet, linking up groups of U.S. citizens and others who want to refuse to pay taxes for military purposes. There have been long legal battles in the United Kingdom to obtain the right to divert such taxes to peaceful use; the outcome was a legal defeat for the mostly Quaker campaigners involved. In the peace movement in Japan, for a long time, the absence of a standing army after World War II meant that the idea of withholding taxes for military purposes was perhaps not as controversial as in the United Kingdom or the United States. Gandhian ideas of satyagraha (nonviolence) influenced the salt tax movement in India and impressed those working for peace in the West. The War Resisters League, based in New York, was founded in 1923 and was explicitly based on Gandhian nonviolence as a means to create a more democratic and equal society. In 1948, there arose out of the U.S. War Resisters League a group known as the Peacemakers. They not only burned draft cards to show their refusal of the draft; they also refused to pay that portion of their taxes that was allocated to the military. More recently, in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s, the UK Peace Tax Campaign was created in order to bring together a change in the law so that pacifist taxpayers could redirect that part of their tax bills normally spent on war and preparations for war toward nonviolent ends.

Religious and spiritual convictions are part, but only part, of what motivates tax resistance. Henry David Thoreau was one of the earliest tax resisters, on moral and social justice grounds. War tax resistance specifically involves groups and individuals in questioning the right of government to oblige them as citizens to pay for the armed forces and maintenance of a national security system. The idea of the citizen's conscience, and the citizen's duty to follow it in public affairs, is at the heart of the war tax resistance movement, as it is at the heart of the conscientious objectors movement, which is also illegal in certain states and at certain times. If citizens are allowed to follow their consciences, campaigners argue, the duty of the state is to allow those who oppose war to redirect their taxes to nonlethal ends.

More specifically, the aim of war tax resistance is to reduce the proportion of the state's budget allocated to waging war. In the United States, this is estimated to be between 30% and 50% and includes a large part of the public national debt, which expanded from Vietnam onward. The purpose of tax resistance is to redirect military expenditure toward more positive ends, such as poverty alleviation, development aid, health care, and social welfare. But because tax resistance remains illegal, it remains an act of civil disobedience, and tax resisters can be prosecuted. The National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund is lobbying to create a public fund, on the interesting grounds of religious freedom, into which the taxes that would normally be paid by resisters for war purposes could be diverted. They also document those who are imprisoned for tax resistance. There is some support inside the U.S. Congress. There are strong and consistent links worldwide between war tax resistance movements and anti-arms campaigning and anti-nuclear movements. For war tax resisters, not paying taxes to fund the war machinery of the state is an [Page 1453]important practical and symbolic action that asserts the rights of citizens to act in public life in accordance with their consciences.

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