How much of our taxes are invested in war?
Many people view paying taxes as a positive investment in social goods, such as infrastructure, social services, and education. Others are critical of taxes as an inefficient or even unethical redistribution of wealth by government. Either way, they want their money to be spent wisely.
But when we pay income taxes (and some other taxes), about half of that money goes to war and militarism. War Resisters League estimates that about 48% of each income tax dollar for fiscal year 2018 is going to military-related spending. This figure has varied only by a few percentage points over the past 16 years.
Does divestment work?
In the divestment campaigns against South Africa’s apartheid system in the 1970s and 1980s, supporters identified companies that did business in South Africa. They refused to do business with those companies, and pressured institutions like banks and universities to divest their pension funds and endowments from those companies too.
Today’s most prominent divestment movements focus on diverting money from Israeli occupation, fossil fuels, and private prisons. In addition, the national Movement for Black Lives platform has an Invest-Divest plank that calls for divesting from war, including a 50% reduction in the military budget, as part of a reinvestment in black communities.
Enlace’s City Prison Divestment Toolkit describes the impact of divestment campaigns this way:
“When many investors in a company decide to sell their stock around the same time, that company’s stock comes under pressure. Over time, the stock price decreases due to shareholders selling their stock, and is then eschewed by many investors due to the negative publicity it has received. A low stock price can make it harder for a company to get loans, finance sales, or expand its business. And if the pressure is persistent and high enough, an entire industry—even a national government—can decide it’s time to change how they do business, or, can be wiped out entirely.”
Taxpayers are the “investors” in the company called “the US government.”
When we decide to sell our “stock” by withholding war taxes from the government, we engage in a powerful form of protest and we start to cut funding for the military off at its source – all of us.
How can we divest from the Pentagon?
While many war tax resisters also call for cuts in government or private spending on war, we begin by divesting ourselves from war and the Pentagon, by refusing to pay some amount of taxes. There are many different ways to do this, including:
- earning a taxable income, and refusing to file a tax return or pay taxes
- earning a taxable income, filing a tax return, and refusing to pay some or all of the taxes owed
- earning an income less than the taxable income level (and choosing either to file or not file a tax return)
Each of these methods has its own risks and benefits. For more information about methods of war tax resistance, see How to Resist on the website of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee.
How do war tax resisters reinvest the resisted taxes?
Some resisters set aside tax money in a personal escrow account to await IRS collection. Some use the money to pay necessary personal expenses.
But many war tax resisters choose to redirect those refused taxes to other causes.
Some pool their money in an escrow account with other resisters – these accounts are called alternative funds. And many resisters also personally redirect their taxes to groups they support.
For example:
Jason Rawn made 1,000 stickers that read, “Defund Militerrori$m” and distributed them to people around the US and the world.
In 2016, Southern California War Tax Alternative Fund held a press conference on April 15 in front of the San Diego Public Library and announced grants of $6,000 to Amikas’ “Homeless to Housed” program, Peace Resource Center of San Diego, Alternatives to Violence/Los Angeles, Tri-Valley CAREs, Nevada Desert Experience, and 9to5 Working Women/LA.
John and Pat Schwiebert of Portland, Oregon, have refused to pay some or all of their federal income tax in protest of military violence for more than 30 years. For many years, they have gone to the offices of the Multnomah County government in person and explained their resistance as they present a check in the amount of their resisted taxes.
In 2017 NWTRCC promoted Collective Redirection of tax dollars to resistance organizations led by Black, Brown, and Indigenous People. Groups of resisters and individuals redirected money and built relationships to enhance the interconnections between our movements. This photo shows presenters and recipients at the May 2017 Collective Redirection ceremony in St. Louis, including a presentation of resisted taxes from the Conscience and Military Tax Campaign to St. Louis-based groups. Click here for more on the 2017 Collective Redirection.
You can also watch our webinar on Redirecting Taxes to Black, Brown, and Indigenous Resistance!
Governments need soldiers, weapons, and infrastructure to wage war. But they have to raise or borrow the money to pay for it – that money is your taxes.
In the US, whether taxes come out of your paycheck or you pay at tax time, whether you get a refund or not, you’re investing in the US government’s wars at home and abroad.
War tax resistance is divesting from war by refusing to pay the taxes that fund it.
We are divesting from the taxes that fund war, and investing in people, planet, and justice. We will not wait for the U.S. government to end its wars. We will not wait for government approval of our actions. We are divesting from war by refusing some or all of those federal tax dollars that fund it, or by living below the taxable income level. We invite you to join us in this public act of civil disobedience to war and war funding.