Defund the War

The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (www.nwtrcc.org) is organizing a 2008 War Tax Boycott.  Tax resistance is an act of conscionable civil disobedience.  The NWTRCC website provides support and information about how to withhold some or all of your personal income tax in the spirit of conscientious objection to current federal policy and war spending.   

This action stands in opposition to tax protest, which is tax evasion based on the claim that taxation in the U.S. is unconstitutional or invalid.  Income tax protestors have lost court cases and have been faced with federal prison.

Tax resistance is a venerable tradition, dating back at least to Thoreau.  Many tax resistors withhold a token amount, include a letter to the IRS stating their rationale and then “redirect” their owed taxes to charitable social programs.  The consequences of resistance include the possibility that the IRS will levy the owed amount plus penalties from a bank account, but as one resistor wrote, “then the onus is on them; I will not have voluntarily assisted [the government] . . . I did not willingly act to further the execution of these wars.”