April 15 is tax day. That day, which will soon be upon us, is the legal deadline for the filing of federal income tax returns. For most, it is a day that simply comes and goes without much notice given to it, except the pressure that many feel to get their income tax in on time, often having to complete the forms the night before. We believe that tax day this year ought to cause us to stop and think.
The dutiful payment of the federal income tax has become the most primary interaction a citizen has with the government. That is to say, it is the most direct relationship most Americans have with their government. It is in the payment of taxes that the impact of government policies is most felt by the average citizen. Clearly, the paying of our taxes is the most basic way and, from the government’s point of view, the most important way, that we support the policies of the state.
In this issue, we examine the unquestioning payment of federal taxes. Our primary concern is the huge portion of our tax dollars used by the state to pay for war and preparations for war. For most Christians, the payment of war taxes has never even been a moral question. The payment or non-payment of taxes has seldom been raised as an issue that confronts us with agonizing moral choices.
With hardly an afterthought, American Christians in recent times have given more money to underwrite military destruction, and to build the most massive warfare state in human history, than we have given to pay for relief, service, evangelism, missions, social action, and all the programs of the churches combined. Similarly, church bodies and agencies, by conforming to government regulations requiring them to withhold federal income tax from their employees’ salaries, have allowed themselves to be used as collection agencies for the federal government virtual tax collectors for the state. Our personal and corporate response to the payment of war taxes is a thorny problem and a serious one. It must become a matter of much more public discussion, and discernment in the Christian community.
All the varied responses now being made by those who have chosen to resist payment of their war taxes need to be explored more deeply and more widely--living below taxable income, pursuing every legal means to reduce tax payments, withholding a small portion of one’s tax payment as a symbolic witness and protest, refusal to pay that portion of one’s income tax that is used by the state for war purposes, or refusal to pay all federal taxes in order to prevent any of one’s money being used for war. The state’s demand for war taxes puts many Christians in a dilemma in which peace claims our commitment but war claims our money. We urge you to seriously and prayer fully re-examine your own response this year, when, in effect, the state comes to tell us all to make a financial contribution to its war purposes.
Jim Wallis was editor-in-chief of Sojourners when this article appeared.
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