April 15 approaches. "Tax Day" has become something of an unofficial holiday, thanks largely to retailers and loan sharks trying to cash in on peoples' frustrations. This year, while some folks may feel renewed pride at writing out that check (or, increasingly, transferring funds over the Internet) to Uncle Sam, there will be a lot of renewed ambivalence or resentment, too. For good reasons.

A lot has happened since we wrote those checks (and ETS! questioned the wisdom of sending them) last year: the "War On Terrorism," tax cuts overwhelmingly favoring the very wealthy, the blank checks--drawing on our tax dollars--being written for military contractors and their high-tech death machines, and a return to massive federal deficits, for starters. As with so many other instances of corporate welfare, corruption, bureaucratic contempt, and state brutality, these issues still raise an obvious but seldom-asked question: why do so many of us pay our 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 the federal government than we pay in. Meanwhile, the extremely wealthy--the top 1%--get far more. Military spending, non-military corporate welfare, and interest on the national debt alone accounting for more than 60% of the discretionary part of the federal budget each year.

Long-time ETS! readers know this rant. We've been publishing some variant on it regularly throughout our six-year history; it's on the web site, if you want the full version. But there's another variant to the question, made more urgent by the events of the last year. Why are even very few of the people who work for peace, even people who devote their lives working for peace, willing to stop paying for war--and for the "Pax Americana" of one of the more brutal, and certainly the most extensive, empire in world history?

It's a pretty obvious question. Most of the billions of people around the globe whose ability to determine their own fates has been compromised either by the U.S. or people whose power is reinforced (and/or bankrolled) by the U.S. have no say in what Washington does. Neither, increasingly, do we--and not just because the White House is occupied by a guy who lost the last election. Just try calling up your local congressman for an appointment on a topic you care about, and see how far you get. Maybe, if you're lucky, an aide will condescend to spend 20 minutes listening to the lifetime of expertise you may have accumulated on an issue he, and his boss, know nothing about. Later, the aide will go play golf, and his boss will vote for the bill you were so horrified by because he wants to curry favor with one of the bill's co-sponsors that can help him, say, get an environmental waiver for a major campaign contributor.

That's what passes for "democracy" in the United States, and meanwhile, the same folks are writing the rules for governments around the world whose citizens--even if they're not being attacked by that government, or the Pentagon's "terrorist"-seeking forces--have no say at all in the matter.

The U.S. government was, ostensibly, founded because people objected to "taxation without representation." Now, the U.S. takes its pound of flesh--and the oil, mineral, timber, cheap labor, and whatever else might be of value--from most of the planet. Empire without representation.

At some point, the people who want to dismantle that empire have got to stop paying for it. After all, the rich folks who do get appointments with your congressperson don't pay--they wrote the rules to insure that the bulk of the burden falls on you and I. And authorized the coercive force to back it up.

That coercion, though, is overrated. They can't, ambitions notwithstanding, jail everyone, and by and large they're not interested--the IRS is a (not very efficient) collection agency, not a police force. 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.

In past years, ETS! has consistently asked the question: Why does virtually everybody volunteer? It's time to stop asking, and start demanding. Those of us who are most aware of the consequences of funding the state have a responsibility to publicly remind people that they, and we, have a choice. There are a few folks saying no. War tax resisters, refusing, for reasons of conscientious objection, to fund militarism, have been painfully aware for years of how much of our tax money goes to killing. Others refuse for libertarian reasons. A larger number choose to live under the taxable income, and still more folks, when forced to choose between enough food to feed the family in April and paying the IRS bill, make the eminently political decision to forego hunger. As usual this year, there will be small groups of folks leafletting or protesting at post offices around the country. You'd think there'd be millions.

Resisting taxes has risks. It can be done symbolically, withholding a small amount here or there; it can be done with an expectation of ultimately paying more in interest and penalties, the extra cost of refusing to cooperate willingly; or it can require major life changes to find tax-free employment and become uncollectable. It can be a nuisance, or it can complicate one's life immensely, or it can force a complete (and valuable) reexamination of why we work and where we want our time and labor to go.

Nobody should undertake tax resistance without understanding the risks. But there's also risks involved in passively cooperating with our own fleecing, or our own demise. And it's simply amazing that more of us don't look closely at which risk is greater.

For resources on tax resistance for reasons of conscientious objection to military spending, nationally, contact the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee at 1-800-269-7464, or www.nwtrcc.org. Locally, the Nonviolent Action Community of Cascadia has experience tax resistance counselors--including the author--and is hosting a workshop on tax resistance at the University Friends Meeting, 40th St. & 9th Ave. NE, from 2- 5:30 PM on Sunday, April 7. NACC also administers the country's largest escrow account of redirected resisted tax dollars, which is then reinvested in grass roots projects around the country--with interest earbubgs granted to fund radical activism. For information, call NACC at 206-547-0952, or www.nacc.info.