As with so many other instances of corporate welfare, corruption, bureaucratic contempt, and state brutality, the Balkans bombings raise an obvious but seldom-asked question: why do so many people pay their income taxes?

This is not a rhetorical question. At the local, state, and especially federal level, we now have a political system where low, middle, and even upper middle income people get far less back in services and benefits from government than they pay in; and the extremely wealthy--the top 1%--get far more. Military spending, non-military corporate welfare, and interest on the national debt alone account for something like 60% of the federal budget each year. The impact is even greater when we consider how much money isn't in the budget in the first place because of what the rich don't pay. Corporations and high-income folks get more tax breaks each year--this year, capital gains (federal) and Prop. 48 (state)--while already-inadequate social spending continues to be gutted and more and more prisons get built to hold the people who can't cope.

The very rich are richer while everyone else's wages lag. Governments are one of the primary mechanisms for this wealth transfer. The money pushing the Dow Jones over 10 bazillion isn't being newly printed; that would be inflationary. Much of it is simply fictional. But when cashed, it comes from somewhere--often from your pockets, via Tax Day. A tiny bit of the proceeds gets recycled into purchasing policies ensuring a tax, legal, and regulatory structure even more favorable to them and less favorable to everyone else. Ordinary citizens today have little meaningful choice or input on almost any important public policy issue at the state level, and none nationally. The stockholder model--one dollar, one share, one vote--has very nearly become what's left of representative democracy.

So why do so many people pay their taxes?

Two hundred twenty or so years ago this was called "taxation without representation" and we threw out the government. We celebrate this tradition. We don't take it seriously.

But what if we refused? The federal government in particular is vulnerable; the income tax system is based on voluntary compliance, and the IRS--though fearsome in its media-assisted reputation--is essentially a very large, and not very efficient, collection agency. People laugh off collection agency bills simply because they don't want to (or can't) pay, but quake in terror of the IRS when the money isn't just going to a private business--it's going, in large quantities, to an institution now dedicated at the highest levels to enriching its patrons even if it means killing you. We are volunteering to buy the bullets for our firing squads.

This isn't a Freemen or Posse Comitatus-type question of the legitimacy of taxation. Quite the opposite; it's specifically because portions of everyone's labor should contribute to the collective well-being of the community (rather than, say, Paul Allen's net worth) that our current tax system is ethically bankrupt. (Washington state, with its reliance on regressive sales and property taxes, is, among states, one of the worst.) The issue here is where the money is going, how it's being spent, and how the spending decisions are made. People struggling to pay the rent, who can't afford health care, have no job security or retirement prospects, can't find affordable daycare, college, or anything between for their kids, and so on, tithe 30% or more of their income to people who already have enough yachts and private jets to get by.

There are a few folks saying no: war tax resisters refusing, for reasons of conscientious objection, to fund militarism; people intentionally living under the taxable income; people who, forced to choose between enough food to feed the family in April and paying the IRS, make the eminently political decision to forego hunger. As usual, there were small groups of folks leafletting at area post offices, and having a vigil or protest downtown, on Tax Day. You'd think there'd be millions.

Resisting taxes--symbolically or fully--has risks. It can be a nuisance, or it can complicate one's life immensely, and no one should undertake it without understanding the risks. But there are also risks involved in passively cooperating with our own demise. And it's simply amazing that more people don't look closely at which risk is greater.

Nonviolent Action Community of Cascadia (NACC) has resources and experienced war tax resistance counselors available for folks who are considering taking action by withholding their taxes and need more information or counseling. Call 206-547-0952, or e-mail cmtc@igc.apc.org.