Most Americans comply with tax laws, regularly paying their obligations. But this tax season, an increasingly vocal number say they are having trouble paying their federal income taxes in good conscience.
Eileen O’Farrell Smith, a retired chaplain in Sonoma, Calif., said she views government spending as a moral issue.
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“How can I pay taxes when I don’t want to fund things I loathe while neglecting things I care about?” asked Smith, who opposes paying for immigration detention centers and the U.S. war on Iran. “Is there a conscientious objection program for monetary payments?”
Conscientious objection to military service may be legally recognized, but nothing similar exists for taxpayers. That hasn’t stopped some people from refusing to pay over the decades — or at least from investigating their options today.
In recent months, taxpayers like Nina D’Andrade, a retired teacher in Alaska, have written to us with similar questions: Could she refuse to pay her taxes as a “protest against ICE’s excesses and abuses,” she asked, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Many others have been openly considering the idea on social media and in online forums like Reddit, while others are taking the issue to their accountants.
Rus Garofalo, president of Brass Taxes, a tax preparation company aimed at artists and freelancers, received so many inquiries that he compiled a fact sheet to help his employees explain the consequences.
“It’s a bigger decision than most people are realizing,” Garofalo said.
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Paying taxes is part of our social contract. If we all decided to withhold our taxes, the government would face an existential threat. And at some point, our taxes will not fully go toward policies or programs that match our values.
“That’s part of the deal with living in a diverse democracy — we don’t always get everything we want, but no one else does either,” said Ruth Braunstein, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University and author of “My Tax Dollars: The Morality of Taxpaying in America.”
“Still, there are times when specific uses of our taxes receive more public scrutiny, whether due to the magnitude of the spending,” he added, “or the moral shock of the population at the actions of their government. We are currently living through one of those moments.”
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Long history of tax resistance
Tax resistance has long been woven into the fabric of the United States, but there is also a long history of citizens unwilling to contribute to the ever-growing military budget, which accounts for about half of the country’s discretionary spending, according to Heidi Peltier, program director for the Costs of War project at Brown University.
Resistance to war taxes dates 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 head tax to protest slavery and the Mexican-American War inspired his famous 1849 essay, “Civil Disobedience,” and landed him in prison for a night.
But modern efforts only emerged after World War II, when income tax was transformed from a “class tax” that affected only the richest into a “mass tax” that affected virtually everyone and used withholdings to strengthen revenue collection.
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“Although this war was widely considered a ‘just war,’ the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 shocked the conscience of many and confirmed growing fears about the staggering human and planetary costs of modern warfare,” Braunstein wrote in his book.
Tax resisters faced a more hostile environment then, he added, although the stigma lessened in later years, for example during the unpopular Vietnam War.
Lincoln Rice is coordinator of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
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The group, created in 1982, offers free resources to anyone considering what Rice calls war tax resistance.
It’s hard to know for sure how many people follow through, but in January, the committee’s website had more than 110,000 unique visitors, nearly triple what it typically sees in an entire year.
“This has only increased with the actions of the Trump administration,” Rice said, starting last year, when the so-called Office of Government Efficiency under Elon Musk launched an aggressive effort to shrink the federal government, raising questions about the constitutionality of its actions.
President Donald Trump’s militarization of ICE, his stance on Greenland and, more recently, the war against Iran, among other policies, have only amplified interest.
Most people come to the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee because they plan to take some type of action, often illegal, and want to be sure they are proceeding sensibly.
In general, there are three levels of action, with the first being the most extreme but completely legal: People commit to taking less than the standard deduction ($15,750 for single filers in tax year 2025), meaning they won’t owe federal income tax.
Others adjust their tax withholding to pay only half of what they owe. The third option is to pay nothing — based on the logic that half of any money sent will be used for military purposes.
Some taxpayers withhold a token amount — say $10.40 (Form 1040 is used to file taxes) or another significant number — and others simply record their objections in a letter or in a “peace tax return,” which is one of the committee’s most popular materials.
Tax resisters generally continue paying their state and local taxes, as well as federal payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare, which are separate from federal income tax withholding and held in separate trust funds. (Medicare’s share is paid out of the general budget.)
There are, of course, important consequences for failure to pay, even if the IRS (US Internal Revenue Service) don’t reach everyone. (High debts can affect, for example, your passport status.)
The financial and general penalties for not reporting are worse than those for not paying, while fraudulent returns are even more serious; but people who deliberately refuse to pay may face civil penalties and, although rare, criminal penalties and even imprisonment are possible.
Failure to pay will almost immediately result in automatic letters from the IRS. Over a 10-year period — the statute of limitations for collecting unpaid debts — you can expect your tax debt to triple, Rice said. (There is no statute of limitations on false or fraudulent statements.)
There have been attempts to pass laws that would allow people to take similar steps legally—essentially, become conscientious objectors to taxes.
The World Peace Tax Fund Bill, first introduced in 1972, and, more recently, the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act, sponsored by Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., would allow taxpayers to direct their taxes toward nonmilitary spending.
Garofalo, the tax preparer, said he understands the feelings of resisters, but doesn’t necessarily believe tax resistance is the most effective way to achieve change — taxpayers could end up paying the government more in interest and penalties.
He said they should tell their elected representatives, not the IRS, why they feel unrepresented.
“A democracy that works, even if imperfectly, is like a sailboat,” he said. “It changes direction from one side to the other. As much as I disagree with what’s happening now,” he continued, paying taxes represents a hope of returning to a center of shared values.
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