Most Americans comply with the tax laws, routinely paying their obligations. But this tax season, an increasingly vocal number say they are struggling to pay their federal income taxes in good conscience.
Eileen O’Farrell Smith, a retired chaplain in Sonoma, Calif., said she saw a budget as a moral document.
“How can I pay taxes when I don’t want to pay for things I abhor, while neglecting things I care about?” asked Ms. Smith, who objects to paying for immigration detention camps and the U.S. war on Iran. “Is there a monetary conscientious objector program?”
Conscientious objection to military service may be legally recognized, but nothing similar exists for tax filers. That hasn’t stopped some people from refusing to pay over the decades — or at least inquiring about their options today.
In recent months, tax filers like Nina D’Andrade, a retired teacher in Alaska, wrote to us with similar questions: Could she refuse to pay her taxes as a “protest to the excesses and abuses of ICE?” Many others have been openly considering the idea on social media and in online forums like Reddit, while others are taking it to their accountants.
Rus Garofalo, president of Brass Taxes, a tax-preparation firm that caters to artists and freelancers, has had enough queries that he compiled a fact sheet to help his tax preparers explain the consequences.
“It’s a bigger decision than most people are recognizing,” Mr. Garafolo said.
Paying taxes is part of our social contract. If we all decided to withhold our tax dollars, the government would face an existential threat. And at any given time, our tax dollars won’t be entirely allocated for policies or programs that match our values.
“This is part of the deal of living in a diverse democracy — we don’t always get everything we want, but neither does anyone else,” said Ruth Braunstein, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University and the author of “My Tax Dollars: The Morality of Taxpaying in America.”
“Even so, there are moments when particular uses of our tax dollars receive more public scrutiny, either because of the magnitude of the spending,” she added, “or because of the public’s moral shock at their government’s actions. We are currently living in one such moment.”
Long History of Tax Resistance
Tax resistance has long been woven into America’s fabric, predating even the Boston Tea Party, but there is also a long history of citizens who don’t want to contribute to the ever-growing military budget, which accounts for roughly half of the country’s discretionary spending, according to Heidi Peltier, director of programs at the Costs of War project at Brown University.
War tax resistance stretches back to the 17th and 18th centuries, with the Quakers. Henry David Thoreau is also often cited in this context; his refusal to pay a poll tax to protest slavery and the Mexican-American War inspired his famous 1849 treatise, “Civil Disobedience,” and landed him in prison overnight.
But the modern efforts didn’t emerge until after World War II, when the income tax was transformed from a “class tax,” which affected only the wealthiest, to a “mass tax” that hit nearly everyone and used withholdings to strengthen collections.
“While this war was largely judged to be a ‘just war,’ the 1945 bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki shocked the conscience of many and confirmed growing fears about the escalating human and planetary costs of modern warfare,” Professor Braunstein wrote in her book. Tax resisters faced a more hostile climate back then, she added, though the stigma declined years later, for example, during the unpopular Vietnam War.
Lincoln Rice is a coordinator at the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee in Milwaukee, Wis. The group, created in 1982, provides free resources to anyone considering what Mr. Rice calls war tax resistance. It’s hard to know with any certainty how many people move forward, but in January, the committee’s website had more than 110,000 unique visitors, nearly triple what it typically sees in an entire year.
“It’s only increased under the actions of the Trump administration,” Mr. Rice said, beginning last year when the so-called Department of Governmental Efficiency’s aggressive effort under Elon Musk to slash the federal government raised questions about whether its actions were constitutional. President Trump’s militarization of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, his stance toward Greenland and most recently the war on Iran, among other policies, has only amplified interest.
Most people call the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee because they are planning to take some sort of action, often illegal, and want to be sure they are proceeding in a sensible way. There are generally three degrees of action, the first being the most extreme but entirely lawful: People pledge to earn less than the standard deduction ($15,750 for single filers in the 2025 tax year), which means they won’t owe any federal income tax.
Others adjust their tax withholdings so they’re paying only half of what they owe. The third option is to not pay anything at all — based on the logic that half of anything they send in will be used for military purposes.
Some filers withhold a symbolic amount — say $10.40 (Form 1040 is used to file taxes) or another meaningful number — and others simply register their objections in a letter or on a “peace tax return,” which is one of the committee’s most popular fliers.
Tax resisters generally continue to pay their state and local taxes, as well as federal payroll taxes into Social Security and Medicare, which are separate from federal income tax withholding and held in separate trust funds. (Part of Medicare is paid out of the general budget.)
There are obviously major consequences for nonpayment, even if the Internal Revenue Service doesn’t catch up with everyone. (Large debts could affect your passport status, for example.) The financial and overall penalties for failure to file a tax return are worse than for failing to pay, while fraudulent returns are even more serious; but people who willfully refuse to pay can potentially face civil penalties, and though rare, criminal penalties and prison time are possible.
Failure to pay will almost immediately result in automatic letters from the I.R.S. Over a 10-year period — the statute of limitations for collecting unpaid debts — you can expect your tax debt to triple, Mr. Rice said. (There is no statute of limitations for false or fraudulent returns.)
There have been efforts to pass legislation that would allow people to legally take similar steps — essentially become conscientious objectors for taxes. The World Peace Tax Fund Bill, initially introduced in 1972, and more recently the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act, sponsored by Representative Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat, would allow taxpayers to divert their tax dollars to nonmilitary spending.
‘A Matter of Conscience’
Ed Hedemann, 81, has been resisting taxes for more than five decades. He refused to be drafted into the Army in 1969, and stopped paying his federal income taxes just a few years later. He has also kept a local landline since then — just so he can refuse to pay the federal telephone excise tax, which started as a temporary tax to finance the Spanish-American War in 1898, when phones were a luxury item. It faded and re-emerged during the world wars, Vietnam and other conflicts, but eventually became permanent.
“I was in Austin, Texas, as a graduate student, so I got a telephone just so I could resist it,” he said.
Mr. Hedemann, who lives in Brooklyn, has always filed accurate tax returns, but includes a letter of explanation of what he’s doing. “It’s a matter of conscience,” he added.
He has redirected his federal tax dollars — a total of roughly $85,000 — to underfunded groups, but has continued to pay state and local taxes, as well as Social Security and Medicare. He has also co-written a book, along with his life partner and tax-resisting compatriot, Ruth Benn, on how others can do the same.
His wages and Social Security benefits have been garnished, and the Justice Department took him to court in 1999 to force him to reveal sources of his assets, but it did not pursue his case further.
He continues to receive a constant stream of notices from the I.R.S. about what he owes, including interest and penalties, which amounts to about $17,000. The 10-year statute of limitations has wiped away most of his obligations.
Mr. Garofalo, the tax preparer, said he understood resisters’ sentiments but did not necessarily believe that tax resistance was the most effective way to reach the goal of change — tax filers may end up paying the government more in interest and penalties. He said they should be telling their elected representatives, not the I.R.S., why they felt disenfranchised.
“A vaguely functioning democracy, it’s like a sailboat,” he said. “It tacks back and forth. As much as I disagree with what is going on now,” he continued, paying taxes represents a hope to return to a center of agreed-upon values.
