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 According to the Program on International Policy Alternatives (PIPA), 65 percent of people surveyed would like to cut the Pentagon's budget and shift that money over to domestic programs such as education, health care, alternative energy, and environmental concerns. Also according to the poll, two of every three Americans favors cutting this year's "supplemental" funding for the Iraq and Afghanistan by an average of $30 billion. Supplemental is used very strongly here, since Iraq and Afghanistan have been costing taxpayers $55-60 billion every year.
Now, it's pretty obvious that our government isn't just going to say "oh, the majority want us to cut the Pentagon's budget? Great!" They're going to ignore us as they do on every other issue and continue to fund illegal wars, proxy wars, and unjust military conflicts all over the world while leaving the people of this country high and dry. Well, there are other ways to get your point across and to pull the rug out from under these bastards. One of the best, though most dangerous (or so it would seem) is War Tax Resistance.
War Tax Resistance is exactly what it sounds like - refusing to pay money to the government that will be used to fund military conflicts and other unjust actions. Henry David Thoreau said, during one of the many blights on our history that is the Mexican-American War, "If a thousand [people] 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.” That remains as true today as it ever was.
Now, of course there can be consequences to these actions, and for those of us with less balls (like myself), just refusing to pay taxes at all is pretty frightening. Although only one person has ever been jailed for war tax resistance since the 1940s, it still is daunting. Sure, I'm a comfortable, complacent bastard, I know. However, there are other ways to resist war taxes without getting thrown in jail. You can usually only pay a portion of your taxes or pay all but a symbolic amount and enclose a letter with your payment explaining your actions. This probably go unnoticed or unmentioned, but you're not likely to get in ALOT of trouble over it.
A great way to resist war taxes with negligible effects on your own livelihood is phone tax resistance. Hang Up On War is a group who explains this process and the risks involved, which are basically null. According to their website, with persistence, when necessary asking to speak with a supervisor, contacting the company frequently (so as not to allow the bill to accumulate too much), most telephone tax resisters have succeeded in getting the company to credit the tax. Some have taken to writing the CEOs of their phone company on a regular basis about these problems.
However, other companies, such as AT&T and Working Assets Long Distance, have been more cooperative. AT&T has a form that resisters can fill out, authorizing the company to withhold billing of the federal tax for “war tax” reasons, while noting that this nonpayment will be reported to the IRS.
I've found a simple solution, however - just get rid of your phone bills altogether by switching to a broadband phone company such as Vonage. I'm becoming a strong advocate of such services, and I just realized that this is yet another reason. As of yet, at least, services like Vonage aren't regulated by the government because they don't use the phone networks. This is an excellent way to protest AND save yourself money at the same time!
At any rate, perhaps one day the billions and billions of dollars that are stolen from us and used to kill people who have done nothing to us will be redirected to more humane causes, but for now, we should resist and let the powers that be know that we won't stand for it.
UPDATE: In the comments of my StringCans post on this topic, David Gross has posted a link to his website where he documents his experiment: living below the tax line in order to pay no income tax. This is a very brave thing he's doing, and I hope you all appreciate the magnitude of that act. He's doing something far more selfless than anything alot of us have likely done. Thanks, David, for the inspiration.
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