The end of the telephone tax
The decision by the U.S. Treasury a few weeks ago to end the long distance telephone tax signals the end of an era for war tax protestors. I never personally participated war tax resistance. In a way I have always felt that the military budget is paid for out of the general fund anyway, so it isn't like you are really keeping any money from the Pentagon when you don't pay a part of your tax bill, or that you have a choice in where your tax money gets spent. The budget is not a cafeteria, after all. That being said, I sympathize in principle with those who have engaged in war tax resistance, not the least because it holds value as a symbolic gesture and as an act of civil disobedience. Years ago, during the Reagan era, I went to a seminar on the subject of war tax resistance, to learn more about the subject. I learned at the time that the telephone tax was singled out as a target of war tax resistance because it was instituted during the Spanish-American war as a means of financing it, and since that time has served as a convenient and simple way of expressing opposition to war. Thus many protestors withheld the federal tax from their monthly telephone bill payments.
This site provides a history of war tax resistance, and it includes the following bit of information:
Now this method of protest is no longer available, but it obviously has no effect on US foreign policy; the US government still has plenty of other means at its disposal for funding its military adventures in Iraq and elsewhere. Life goes on, and war goes on as well.
This site provides a history of war tax resistance, and it includes the following bit of information:
A suggestion in 1966 to form a mass movement around the refusal to pay the (at that time) 10 percent telephone tax was given an initial boost by Chicago tax resister Karl Meyer. This was followed by War Resisters League developing a national campaign in the late 1960s to encourage refusal to pay the telephone tax.Forty years later, the US is fighting yet a new imperialist war overseas. David Lazarus of the San Francisco Chronicle reported last year that, this method of protest had once again become popular among some protestors against the Iraq war.
Now this method of protest is no longer available, but it obviously has no effect on US foreign policy; the US government still has plenty of other means at its disposal for funding its military adventures in Iraq and elsewhere. Life goes on, and war goes on as well.
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