March 1997
Greetings!
I hope that the recent holiday season brought you much joy. Now, however, we are well into a season of increasing frustration and uncertainty for many Americans that will not cease until the middle of April. I am referring, of course, to the tax season.
For many Americans, whether of liberal and conservative bent, the filing of one's income tax return is a time of severe moral contradiction. On the one hand, we wish to fulfill our legal and ethical obligations to our government; on the other, at the same time we also see our tax dollars being spent in ways that directly or indirectly contradict some of our most deeply held moral beliefs. Some Americans oppose federal aid for abortion; others are profoundly troubled by military spending. Some Americans believe that the National Endowment for the Arts is a deplorable waste of taxpayer dollars; others believe the same thing about tobacco subsidies or the "War on Drugs." Yet the present system of taxation and appropriation gives us no options, no control (except the extremely indirect controls provided by ballot box and mailbox) over the way that our tax dollars are spent, no alternatives other than to either become accomplices to what we see as immorality or to become criminals before the law.
I am a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), and as such I have long-standing conflicts regarding supporting the machinery of war. There has been a proposal on the books for a long time regarding the establishment of a Peace Tax Fund. This fund would enable those who do not wish to support military spending to have their tax monies specifically directed away from such expenditures. Recently, the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) has convincingly made the point that this is truly a First Amendment issue of religious liberty for those of us in the Society of Friends and the other churches that share the peace testimony.
But if this is true for us, then it is equally true for those who are concerned about the other issues I have mentioned. The Peace Tax Fund idea does not go far enough. We need a Self-Directed Income Tax (SEDIT), allowing us to specify the destinations of our taxpayer dollars. Even if we are unable to select the exact programs that we wish to fund, at minimum we should be able -- all of us, whether liberal, progressive, conservative, libertarian, whatever -- to direct our individual tax payments away from programs that we feel unable to support on moral, ethical, or religious grounds.
Therefore, this letter is being sent out to citizens and organizations of many disparate viewpoints, who may be nevertheless be able to agree on this point. For any of us to gain this freedom, we will have to work together to ensure that all of us receive it.
I will eagerly await your reactions and replies. Best wishes to you all.
Peace,
WS (Skip) Mendler
Pocono Greens
PO Box 131, Marshalls Creek PA 18335-0131
Note: The SEDIT idea, to the best of my knowledge, has not been formally adopted as policy by any Green organization. The organizational affiliation above is mentioned for identification purposes only.