April 10, 2006
Internal Revenue
Service Center
Atlanta, GA 39901-0002
Re: 2005 1040 return for
[SSN]
To Whom It May Concern:
Once again
this year I am unable to pay any federal income tax which you might deem "due"
from me. As I have stated to you in years past, I am a Christian. It
would be a mortal violation of my faith in God to pay for war or the preparation
for war. Jesus died for each of us and Jesus' death on the cross was
sufficient for all salvation. Attempts at "saving" ourselves or anything we may
hold dear which include a willingness to kill those for whom Jesus has
died is a denial of His gift of Life to us. The Holy Spirit will not let
me sin in this way. I am completely and utterly constrained by God from
voluntarily paying for war.
Unfortunately,
approximately 50% of federal income tax money, which goes into the U.S. general
fund, gets spent in some way on past,
present, or future war. Congress
has not, as it should have, supplied a way for religious conscientious objectors
to pay taxes without violating
our religious beliefs. I, and others
like me, are therefor left with no alternative but to not pay, since I certainly
cannot willingly disobey
God.
Because the
First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and certain U.S. treaty obligations to
honor the religious practices of its citizens require that I not be forced to
violate my faith, I do not, "to the best of my knowledge and belief", owe any
tax. Therefore, in order to be able to sign the attached tax return, which
is required in order for you to consider it filed, I have left blank line 75,
"Amount you owe". I do not owe you anything, for the government has
provided me no way of paying taxes which does not violate my faith in
God.
I fully understand that you would want me to
place a figure of $2841.54 on line 75. I must allow you to place it there
yourselves else I could not in good conscience sign the
return.
Some of the amount which I am not paying
($1182.85) is self-employment tax. I would pay this if the self-employment
tax were going into the Social Security trust fund as it should. But it is
not. Former Georgia Senator Sam Nunn, in a speech before Congress in the
Congressional Record of March 24, 1993, stated what I have known for years:
social security money is really being spent on the "operating fund", and that
includes military. Nunn asked: "So the Social Security fund that
everybody believes is in such great surplus, what does it have? A
whole lot of Treasury bills. How are they going to be paid back?"
I believe they are not. But even if they are paid back at some
future time, I cannot now knowingly support killing by paying money which
will be "borrowed" for military spending.
I have seen nothing
to indicate that this current use of Social Security Trust Fund money for
regular ongoing governmental expenditures
-- including military expenditures
-- has changed. Under the Bush administration' s "war on terrorism", the
government is again engaged in
deficit spending solely because of its
warfighting. I cannot knowingly allow the government to borrow money from
me for killing any more than I can spend it
directly.
Instead I am redirecting these unpaid
taxes ($2841.54 worth of income and self-employment taxes) to the Tax Conversion
Fund For Peace & Human Needs, from which the money will go to feed Christ's
sheep and promote nonviolence and peace, as commanded and exemplified by Jesus
himself. I am asking that you also, in recognition of my religious
freedom, return to me the $72.31 which was withheld from my pay during
2005.
How horribly ironic that taxes for killing are
due the day after Easter -- after we celebrate God's overcoming of
death! If only we truly believed, truly understood and lived like death is
overcome, like Jesus actually rose, we would not be paying for killing. In our
militarized world, Tax Day is a blasphemous repudiation of Easter; it reveals
our continuing enslavement to evil, our failure to accept the resurrection of
Jesus as the means of salvation. And so, rejecting the gift of life, we
continue toward Hell.
God has chosen another
path and, by the grace of God and the strength of the Holy Spirit in my life, I
am mystifyingly but thankfully enabled to follow God on that other path.
While Congress flaunts Jesus' commands to care for the poor, hungry, sick, and
imprisoned by cutting funding for the poor, hungry, and sick, while increasing
prisons and prison sentences -- while it slashes housing for the poor and health
care for infants but raises funding limits for the military and gives huge tax
breaks to the wealthy (oh, were the prophet Amos here today!), my God continues
to say to me, as God has said to me for thirty years now: "Don't worry
about tomorrow; I will take care of you. Just do not sin. Put away
your sword; love those who are supposed to be your enemies, and feed my
sheep."
That is all I am doing: following my
faith in God Almighty. For that I am sure you will continue to seek to
extract from me by force that which I cannot give you voluntarily without
violating my relationship with God. That the U.S.A. is supposed to honor
religious freedom seems not to matter, for the government is Caesar and Caesar
mistakenly thinks it is God. You wrongly believe your military might to be
the source of salvation and you will persecute those of us who refuse to pay
homage to false gods of metal. I can only await your persecution, for what
good does it do someone to save their bank account or home (the IRS has seized
and sold our home in the past) if they lose their soul in the process?
On the other hand, you could honor the Gospel
and the Constitution, upholding Christ and freedom of religion, by accepting the
redirection
of my taxes as sufficient to meet my obligations under the
supreme law of the land.
Thank you for your
attention to this matter. I am sorry I cannot know in advance the
name of the person who will be reading this letter, but I hope you will
handle my dilemma in a personal and responsive
manner.
Sincerely,
Robert G. Randall II