?Among the many ways to boycott war, one is to pay a little less for it,? reads the introduction to the One Million Tax Payers for Peace Web site. If you don?t want your tax dollars paying for war, one option to consider is to deduct $10.40 from your bill this April 15 and send it to this organization instead. Your contribution will be placed in an escrow account and 90 percent of your donation will finance groups teaching ?nonviolent responses to aggression? in schools and communities. The other 10 percent will go to the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund, a group that has spent more than 25 years lobbying to make conscientious objector status applicable to taxes, as it is to the draft.

One Million Tax Payers for Peace has a goal for 1 million Americans to participate in ?very low risk civil disobedience? by deducting $10.40 from their annual or quarterly tax payments and writing the IRS and their representatives to let them know that it is being used to pay a Peace Tax, instead. The site gives detailed instructions on how to notify government officials of your Peace Tax contribution, as well as how not to. They warn, for example, that writing such a letter directly on your tax form will result in a $500 fine. The site is also an excellent resource for addressing the specific concerns, such as potential social security, green card, or IRS audit issues.

In the final analysis, ?withholding $10.40 for one year, interest comes to $0.75 (at January 1, 2002 tax rates) and penalty $0.64, for a total of $11.79 due.? For this reason, the site asserts, some members have been paying a Peace Tax for years ?with no consequences other than form letters from the IRS.?
-Erin Ferdinand

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