To Whom It May Concern:
Regarding my Estimated Taxes for 2007
It is only with a huge reservation that I send this payment to
the government as my first quarterly payment of the “Estimated
Tax” for 2007, which money is to pay for Social Security and
Medicare, as a “Self-Employment” Tax. (From the IRS website:
“Self-employment tax (SE tax) is a social security and Medicare
tax primarily for individuals who work for themselves. It is similar
to the social security and Medicare taxes withheld from the pay
of most wage earners.”)
You will note that I am not sending the full amount.
As a matter of conscience I will not voluntarily pay my hard earned
money to a government whose daily order of business is waging war.
By paying such I would be funding those activities, thereby participating
in the war. (If I paid for the bullets a criminal used to kill someone,
wouldn't I be considered an accessory to murder?)
I refuse to pay military taxes.
I have, therefore, deducted a Token Amount to protest the use
of my tax money in funding an illegal and immoral war.*
Because the IRS provides NO means for paying “Income Tax”
separately from the “Self-Employment Tax”, I must deduct
my token amount from the total. This will explain why I have withheld
payment of $315.18, or 51% of the $618.00 calculated for my 2006
federal taxes (apart from the $2,224.00 Self- Employment Tax) This
51% corresponds to the proportion of the federal budget that goes
to pay for present wars and war preparations, and for interest on
the national debt accrued in order to pay for past wars.
*Our country is fighting an illegal war in violation of the rule
of international law, and the Charter of the United Nations. The
United Nations Charter is a treaty of the United States, and as
such forms part of the "supreme law of the land" under
the Constitution, Article VI, Clause 2. The UN Charter is the highest
treaty in the world, superseding states' conflicting obligations
under any other international agreement. (Art. 103, UN Charter)
(The United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has told the BBC
the US- led invasion of Iraq was an illegal act that contravened
the UN charter. BBC News, Thursday, 16 September, 2004) I do this
because roughly half of the federal income tax is used to fund the
US war machine. Monstrous amounts of dollars which could reinvigorate
our ailing health, housing, and school systems are instead diverted
to increase the profits of defense corporations and simultaneously
destroy life. As federal support for education programs are slashed
and more and more young people are told by military recruiters that
the best way they can get a college education is to enlist, the
spirit of our society takes a beating. The war machine continues
at an incredible pace. I believe war tax resistance is a critical
way to slow it down. • Currently, the US government is spending
at least $3.9 billion a month to finance its war and occupation
on Iraq, and the US military industrial complex. I have protested
in anti-war marches and parades both before and during this war.
I continue to protest the war daily…in conversation; by posting
anti-war signs in my yard; in letters written to the “president”,
my senators and congresspersons; with bumper-stickers and posters.
The government's response blatant has been to ignore my protests.
"Let them march all they want, as long as they continue
to pay their taxes." -Alexander Haig, U.S. Sec. of State, June
12, 1982
Tax resistance is the most direct way US citizens can avoid being
complicit in this war. If all of us who have written our Congresspersons
or taken to the streets also refuse to financially back the war,
the decision-makers in Washington have a much harder time ignoring
our resistance.
This is why I am writing today, and why you will not receive that
51% of my “tax bill” which the government would wrongly
use to pay for war. "If a thousand men [and women] were
not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent
and bloody measure, as it would to pay them, and enable the State
to commit violence and shed innocent blood." -Henry David Thoreau,
during the War against Mexico, 1846.
Sincerely, and in the Cause of Peace,
Michael Zargarov
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