THE TRIBUTE MONEY
Mayer, Milton
The Tribute Money By Milton Mayer IN 1949 a man named Veepings came to see me and stayed for a week. He was a nice man, from the Bureau of Internal Revenue, and he had come, he said, to audit my...
...That is to earn less than $500 a year and be tax-free...
...In 1950 my telephone rang and a man said: "I am Veepings...
...Victorious war has failed to do it anywhere...
...If I said, "No, he should not," I should stand self-condemned as a Christian communist...
...You are painfully honest...
...This is your 1949 return...
...My first responsibility is not to preserve the state—that is Hitlerism and Stalinism—but to preserve my soul...
...I am opposed to taxation without representation...
...I offer to pay all of my taxes for peaceable purposes, the only purposes which history suggests will defend democracy...
...I have thought of the fact that better men than I, much better men, disagree with me...
...The appeal to the rights of man was taken seriously, and McCarthyism, McCarranism, and MacArthurism were all as yet unborn...
...When may I see you...
...I am settling for 50 per cent...
...Sit down and tell me your troubles...
...I am over-age, spavined, hump-backed, bald, and blind...
...The only thing I don't know is who it is that does it...
...How can I urge others to do what I do not care to do myself...
...I have no choice, Mr...
...That," I snapped, "was General Keitel's defense at Nuremberg...
...Worst of all, I am not a good enough man to be doing this sort of thing...
...I like the out-of-doors and I do not want to go to jail...
...Why shouldn't it be I? I have sailed through life, up to now, as a first-class passenger on a ship that is nearly all steerage...
...My labor is...
...No, the trouble with earning less than $500 a year is that it doesn't support a family...
...I go up and down the land denying the decree of Caesar that all able-bodied men between 18 and 25 go into the killing business and urging such men as are moved in conscience to decline to do so...
...I am ordered to audit your return...
...When he got through auditing, my home, my work, and I were a homogeneous shambles, and I owed the government one dollar...
...I was moving too fast around Europe...
...Mayer—if you weren't bringing all this on yourself...
...I was being harassed...
...I have nothing to sell but my labor, and you want another week of my labor and a dollar on top of it...
...The Boston (and New York and Baltimore and Charleston) "tea parties" of the 1770's were, of course, a vivid and violent form of tax refusal endorsed, to this day, by the Daughters of the American Revolution...
...By comparison with the rest of mankind, I have always had too much money, too many good jobs, too good a reputation, too many friends, and too much fun...
...Mayer," said Veepings, "I think you bring this all on yourself...
...You already did," I said, "and I gave you a dollar...
...Any—substantial discrepancy, shall we say...
...I realize that anarchy is unworkable and that that is why the state came into being...
...If I try to abdicate it, to the general will, or to my representatives or my ministers, I am guilty of betraying not only democracy but my nature as a man endowed with certain inalienable rights...
...And I realize, too, that the state can not be maintained without its authority's being reposed in its members' representatives...
...They were, of course, outlaws anyway...
...Thoreau was put in jail over night, and the next day Emerson went over to Concord and looked at him through the bars and said, "What in the devil do you think you're doing, Henry...
...I hasten to say that I feel like Penn, not like Fox...
...Besides, I was being paid in German money, on which I had to pay German taxes, and, having no head for figures or German, I let the thing ride...
...I'm a busy man...
...I hold the highest office of the land, the office of citizen, with responsibilities to my country heavier, by virtue of my office, than those of any other officer, including the President...
...And I do not hold my office by election but by inalienable right...
...In addition, if the government comes and gets it, and fines me, as I suppose it might, it will collect more for war than it would have in the first place...
...it refunded- me everything above 100 per cent of the tax due...
...I am only obeying orders...
...Somebody always has...
...Any time," I said, affecting lightheadedness, "I have nothing to conceal, and, incidentally, nothing to show you, either...
...I am paying 50 per cent of my 1952 income tax and sending the balance to people who will buy something fit for human consumption with it...
...It never was...
...Maybe I can help you, or send you to someone who can...
...I have thought about my wife and children and my responsibility to them...
...Flattery will get you nowhere," I said...
...The government doesn't want me...
...I could put my property in my wife's name and bury my money in a hole or a foreign bank account...
...I can not abdicate my right because it is inalienable...
...But I am not Al Capone...
...I thought of paying Veepings only 65 4/1 Oc, but then I decided to pay him the whole dollar...
...I was not being put in prison, like Thoreau...
...don't, myself," said Veepings, "but—" "But what...
...I doubt that anybody will be able to bring me more light in this matter than I now have...
...The government did not, naturally, refund me everything above 65.4% of the tax due...
...I had not, however, succeeded in refusing to pay, because, being, like most peaceable persons, an optimist, I had overestimated my income, paid-as-I-went 65.4% of the overestimate, and, at the end of the year, the government owed me money anyway...
...My Senators will not represent me...
...I was not being shot, like Nathan Hale...
...But the war tax problem seems not to have arisen until 1755, when a considerable number of Quakers refused to pay a tax levied in Pennsylvania for the war against the Red Indians...
...I can not see why I should not persist in my folly...
...if I did try deceit, I'd be caught...
...Mr...
...There is only harassment...
...Nothing," he said, "nothing at all...
...But I am not, in this instance, trying to emulate better men...
...Eggs were 89 cents a dozen today...
...I told you," said Veepings, ignoring the epithet, "that I never meddle in politics...
...Society is not sacred...
...History, however, is on the side of us angels...
...Mayer," he said, "you don't understand my position...
...We shall," I said, icily, "unless we want to be sued for slander...
...Somebody will take care of me...
...Still, the Christian Gospels are, it seems to me, passing clear on the point of taxes...
...In 1951 and 1952, Veepings couldn't find me...
...I am even fuller aware of the converse anomaly of refusing to pay 50 per cent of my taxes when 50 per cent of the 50 per cent I won't pay would be used for peaceable purposes...
...I am...
...I realize all that...
...But in this state—and a very good state it is, or was, as states go, or went—I can not get anybody to represent me...
...If I were a subsistence farmer I might get by, but I'm a city boy...
...I never meddle in politics," said Veepings...
...I have been ordered," he said, "to audit your 1949 income tax return...
...Do you MILTON MAYER, lecturer and author, can currently be heard in a radio series, "Voices oi Europe," over 100 stations affiliated with the National Association of Educational Broadcasters...
...The place was propitious for Gandhi, a slave colony whose starving people had no money or status to lose...
...What can you do with eleven cents...
...You remember last time...
...Like every other horror-stricken American I keep asking myself, "What can a man do...
...Last year you found that in 1948 I cheated the government by mistake...
...Veepings," I said, "why don't you let me alone...
...I want to be let alone...
...Who, if not I, is full of unearned blessings...
...I'll give you two dollars to stay away...
...just as the time was propitious for Thoreau, a time of con^-fidence and liberality arising from confidence...
...But I wouldn't be surprised— strictly unofficially, Mr...
...When George Fox visited William Penn, Penn wanted to know if he should go on wearing his sword...
...And it will lose them their most precious possession, their souls, if they call a man husband and father who has lightly sold his own...
...My grandfather used to say that the Mayers were early settlers—fifty cents on the dollar...
...If my offense is anarchy—which I dislike—I can't help it...
...You know, of course," I added, "what happened to General Keitel...
...Totalitarianism was unthinkable and parliamentary capitalism was not in danger...
...I have thought about all this, in the large and in the little...
...So Emerson paid Thoreau's poll tax, and Thoreau, deprived of his freedom by being put out of jail, wrote his essay on civil disobedience...
...But I wouldn't be surprised—unofficially, Mr...
...Wear it," said Fox, "as long as thou canst...
...It is illegal, under the McCarran Act, to be either a Christian or a communist, and I don't want to tangle with both the Internal Revenue Act and the McCarran Act at the same time, especially on the delicate claim to being a Christian...
...I am fully aware of the anomaly of refusing to pay 50 per cent of my taxes when 50 per cent of the 50 per cent I do pay is used for war...
...I realize that a man who believes in taxes can not pick and choose among them and say he will not spend 50 per cent of them on guns just because he doesn't need guns...
...Mr...
...I have thought about my effectiveness...
...You ought to be paying me...
...And I am not mathematically minded...
...If the preservation of society compels me to commit the worst evils of anarchy, then the cost of preserving society is too high...
...Seventy-five years later, Gandhi read Thoreau's essay and worked it into a revolution...
...I have none for 1949, either...
...That grieves me...
...A man who "makes trouble for himself," as the saying is, is thought to reduce his effectiveness, partly because of the diversion of his energies and partly because some few, at least, of his neighbors will call him a crank, a crook, or a traitor...
...Do you mean," I asked, "that you are going to move in for a week again, gouge my eyeballs, pull my fingernails, and all for another dollar...
...That," he said, "was your 1945 return...
...Unofficially, Mr...
...Don't tell me that I am represented by my vote...
...It isn't easy...
...Bring what...
...But how can a million old men who themselves will not decline to hire the killing expect a million young men to do it...
...Mr...
...War will not even save them their lives, not even victorious war this time...
...He was a nice man, from the Bureau of Internal Revenue, and he had come, he said, to audit my 1948 income tax return...
...Seventy-five years after the Revolution, Henry David Thoreau refused to pay his poll tax because the government was waging both slavery against the Negroes and war against the Mexicans...
...I know Who feeds the young ravens, but I know, too, that the Devil takes care of his own...
...The problem goes to the very essence of the relationship of God, man, and the state...
...I have thought about, for example, anarchy...
...I am the type that, if Nero threw me naked into the amphitheatre, would work out a way to harass the lions...
...Other governments would become helpless, including the Russian, and thus would we be able to save democracy at home and abroad...
...I am not an early Christian...
...This auditing...
...It could happen here, but it won't...
...I won't stand for it...
...II So I was being harassed—unofficially—by the government of the United States—the biggest, busiest government on earth...
...Of course the government doesn't want me for military service...
...the government has, I believe, no way, under the general revenue system, to accept my offer...
...If you tell me that there is no other way to preserve the state than by the implicit totalitarianism of Rousseau's "general will," I will reply that that is the state's misfortune and men must not accept it...
...You wouldn't remember me...
...The early Quakers, who were pacifists, refused to pay tithes to the Established Church and went to prison...
...A proletarian is a man who has nothing to sell but his labor...
...Now see here, Veepings," I said, unevenly, "I'm a busy man...
...Mayer," said Veepings, in his double-breasted blue-serge voice, "that you do not understand me...
...In so far as there is any worldly sovereign in the United States, it is not the general will, or the Congress, or the President...
...What weight does a man have, besides petition and prayer, that he isn't using to save his country's soul and his own...
...Mayer," he said, "you have what we here at the Bureau call an unmathematical mind...
...Extremely unusual...
...Not a big family like mine...
...I not only am not an anarchist, but I believe in taxes, in very high taxes, and especially in a very high graduated income tax...
...What the government wants is my dime to buy a dozen men with...
...I know I can't say that you ought to do what I can't do or that I'll do it if you do it...
...If a million young men would decline, in conscience, to kill their fellow-men, the government would be as helpless as its citizens are now...
...The frustration of the horror-stricken American as he sees his country going over the falls without a barrel is more than I can bear just now...
...That's politics, and you told me yourself that you never meddle in politics...
...You don't understand mine," I said, snarling...
...Mayer's articles have turned up in many leading American publications, including Life, The Reader's Digest, Harper's, The Sat' urday Evening Post, Fellowship, The Commonweal, and Better Homes & Gardens...
...You are also honest, at least as far as your income tax is concerned...
...I am, as Veepings himself said of me, an honest man...
...If anything is effective in matters of this sort, it is example...
...I have surrendered my sovereignty to another Master than the general will—I do not mean to be sanctimonious here—and if the general will does not serve Him it does not serve me or any other man...
...Mayer,— for an ordinary citizen like you—" "An ordi—" "I mean, for a man of modest income to have his return audited two years in a row...
...I wouldn't," I said bitterly, "but I do...
...My Congressman will not represent me...
...I voted against the national policy...
...The light I need will come to me from within or it won't come at all...
...Its helplessness then would, I think, be at least as contagious abroad as its violence is now...
...Mayer," said Veepings, "may I speak to you unofficially...
...And besides, I'm a proletarian...
...Those long letters,' Veepings," I said, "are my reasons for refusing, or trying to refuse, to pay 34.6 per cent of my income tax...
...Sit down," I said, gesturing with the telephone receiver...
...I'm afraid, Mr...
...The reason for the 65 4/10c was that I had undertaken, in my 1948 return, to refuse to pay 34.6% of my income tax, that being the percentage of the United States Budget which was going directly into guns, in that happy-go-lucky year...
...I'm a proleterian...
...When, if not now, will I start to earn them...
...I'm the type that always assumes that the bank knows how to add...
...Having done so, I am constrained in conscience to uphold my vote, and not betray it...
...You can make a telephone call and throw the penny away...
...It is I. I am sovereign here...
...Then," said Veepings, evenly, "we'll have to start from scratch...
...But this is 1953, and I am back home, and the 34.6 per cent that the government was buying guns with a few years ago has risen to 60 per cent or 80 per cent or 110 per cent...
...Mayer—if this extremely unusual procedure wasn't the consequence of your writing those long letters to the Collector of Internal Revenue...
...I am under orders, and I don't want to hear about Keitel, or Sheitel, or whoever it is...
...The primitive Christians, who were pacifists, refused to pay taxes for heathen temples...
...Proletarianism isn't politics, it's economics," I said, my voice like a knife...
...You make so much noise about being honest that, if I hadn't audited your 1948 return, I'd be suspicious of you...
...But I don't know if I can say that you ought to do what I do or even if I ought to do it...
...You have no head for figures and you are, for that reason, a lovable fellow and you know it...
...I was not being hanged, like John Brown...
...When the apostle says both that "we should obey the magistrates" and that "we should obey God rather than man," I take it that he means that we should be law-abiding persons unless the law moves us against the Lord...
...You also found that I paid five quarterly installments that year by mistake...
...What good is a dollar to you...
...A be paying taxes anyway on what I bought with $500, but that doesn't bother me, because the issue is not, as long as I am only human, separation from war or any other evil-doing, but only as much separation as a being who is only human can achieve within his power...
...The whole thing came to a dollar...
...But somebody over 25 has got to perform the incongruous affirmation of saying, "No," and saying it regretfully rather than disdainfully...
...Since I could not very well sue the government, in its own courts, for the 34.6 per cent that, under its own laws, it had taken, my refusal looked as if it would remain an empty gesture until such time as I would stop being either optimistic or peaceable...
...I have thought as hard as I can think...
...But I am not very effective anyway, and neither, so far as I can see, is anyone else...
...Ill There is only one other alternative, and that is no alternative either...
...I," said Thoreau, "am being free...
...There is no money and no martyrdom in being harassed...
...It's extremely unusual—unofficially, Mr...
...If I decline to buy men and give them guns, the government will, I suppose, force me to...
...That's a dozen eggs and eleven cents...
...Especially when the first audit failed to disclose any—" "Any what...
...I had no records for 1948, and we had to start from scratch...
...know what a proletarian is, you cad...
...Was it worth it...
...You're throwing my money away," I concluded, fighting mad...
...I would be hard put to answer if you asked me whether a man should own property in the first place, for a government to tax...
...Men are a dime a dozen...
...He tries to do constructive work, but all the while he is buying guns...
Vol. 17 • March 1953 • No. 3
