1/5 There is an interesting history behind the telephone excise tax, which in the 1960s was a focus of anti-war and pacifist war tax refusers. nwtrcc.org/programs-event…
2/5 The Catholic worker and war tax refuser (who I lived with for a while) Karl Meyer in 1966 began urging war opponents to refuse to pay their phone taxes as a way of protesting the Vietnam War. The War Resisters League began promoting telephone tax refusal that year.
3/5 According to the War Resisters League “Telephone tax resistance grew to an estimated half million people by 1972.” For years, ATT would try and cut service to war tax refusers, but Meyer sued ATT in the 1970s and won a federal suit saying it was up the the IRS to collect.
4/5 After ATT breakup and rise of multiple long distance carriers, phone tax refusal continued (I refused for more than a decade). The progressive long distance company Working Assets refused to comply w/ IRS efforts to collect and enclosed coupons you could fill w/ your bill.
5/5 The phone tax refusal campaign deprived the US government of hundreds of millions of dollars in war revenue in the 1960s and 1970s. It remains one of the most effective (if unknown) mass civil disobedience campaigns in US history.
6/6 Karl used to complain to me that he had never been placed on Nixon’s enemies list, since he feels he did substantial damage to the war machine through his tax refusal in the 1960s and 1970s.
