Fw: war tax resistors- legislation

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ken Freeland"
To:
Sent: Wednesday, January 19, 2005 5:04 PM
Subject: FW: Victory! Andy's op-ed in Austin American-Statesman 1/19!



COMMENTARY
McKenna: My taxes as fuel for his war
Andy McKenna, LOCAL CONTRIBUTOR
Austin American-Statesman
Wednesday, January 19, 2005

President Bush recently said of Osama bin Laden: "His vision of the world is
one in which there is no freedom of expression, freedom of religion and/or
freedom of conscience."

But in Bush's fervor to export democracy at the end of a gun barrel, he has
denied many people these very freedoms. From Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib to
Muslims and anti-war protestors in the United States, the Bush
administration has run roughshod over civil liberties. And although I am not
being detained or tortured, I am also paying a price for freedom.

As another tax year ends, many wage earners start preparing their 1040 forms
for the Internal Revenue Service. Meanwhile, I and other members of Austin
Conscientious Objectors to Military Taxation (ACOMT,
www.acomt.org) are preparing to suffer the consequences of our principled
refusal to pay taxes that finance war.

In 2004, our group's members saw an increase in IRS seizures of our wages
and bank accounts. A state worker had a bank account seized twice and
recently received more garnishment notices from the IRS. A Quaker
emergency-room physician, whose car was seized in 1991, was recently visited
at her home by an IRS agent and faces possible seizure of her wages and
another car. A housecleaner and artist continues living intentionally below
the taxable level to legally avoid paying war taxes.

In the fall, after 11 years of inaction, the IRS garnished my wages by
taking all but $662.50 - the monthly federal poverty level - from my
paychecks.

The $465 billion-a-year war machine has caused the deaths of more than 1,300
U.S. military personnel and as many as 17,000 Iraqi civilians. According to
the National Priorities Project, the Iraq war has cost Austin families $375
million to date.

I and other war-tax resisters want to pay our taxes, but we cannot in good
conscience pay others to kill in our names. We regularly redirect thousands
of our tax dollars to humanitarian and peaceful causes. Last April 15, ACOMT
gave money to the American Friends Service Committee's relief efforts in
Iraq and to Austin's Nonmilitary Options for Youth. Just before Christmas,
we made a donation to Casa Marianella and La Posada, two East Austin
immigrant shelters.

This is a drop in the bucket, but it is one drop less for the barrelsful of
blood being shed in Iraq. And it means a lot to the nonprofit groups
struggling to fill the canyon in human services funding left by the massive
Pentagon budget.

There ought to be a law - since the First Amendment apparently does not
apply to us - that would enable us to direct our taxes to a Treasury
Department fund dedicated to non-military purposes. Our group believes that
the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Bill is a win-win solution. It would
grant civil liberties to our minority class of taxpayers by extending to
war-tax resisters the legal protections that the Military Selective Service
Act gave conscientious objectors. It would increase tax revenues and
decrease the IRS's collection burden - without reducing the military budget
or "opening the floodgates" to other taxpayers.

More than 1,000 Central Texans have signed a petition supporting the bill,
and dozens of Austin clergy, community groups and statewide organizations
such as the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas have endorsed it. Many
national secular and religious organizations - even Bush's own denomination,
the United Methodist Church - support the National Campaign for a Peace Tax
Fund (www.peacetaxfund.org). The bill has the bipartisan backing of 44
members of Congress, including three representatives from Texas.

Despite such support, it has not had a hearing in a decade, while
conscientious objectors around the country have endured many civil liberties
violations by the IRS.

The Jan. 30 election in Iraq is a supposed step toward freedom. But in
Austin, some of us are still struggling to enjoy freedoms such as no
taxation without representation. "Freedom has been attacked. Freedom must be
defended," Bush once declared. He should make a New Year's resolution to
follow his own advice.

McKenna, an Austin resident, volunteers for the National Campaign for a
Peace Tax Fund. He can be reached at peacetax-tx@ev1.net


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