“Taking this action involves real risk, nonetheless, the cost of inaction remains far greater. The forces of warmongering and corporate greed have found our house divided, and ripe for plunder. The results of the 2024 election only further illustrated the divide between those unwilling to compromise shared values of equal and inalienable human rights, and those who embrace our country’s settler colonial roots by adopting a politic of privilege at least, or outright nazism at worst.
Weaponized incompetence, organized abandonment, and policies of poverty and identity criminalization are poised to steal more lives here at home, even as our tax dollars are hard at work funding war, supporting apartheid, and dealing arms abroad. Despite the forces of algorithmic separation, misinformation, and state propaganda, Americans are learning we don’t have to suffer this. There are proven systems at work all over the globe that are consistently providing for people’s needs. Policies we could implement here, were that spending not perpetually deprioritized. Even in the years since the onset of the pandemic, which caused mass disablement and over 1.1 million deaths here in the U.S. alone, more of our funds have been directed towards militarism than community care.
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In 2025, we’re calling upon all people of conscious to demand our government divest from apartheid and genocide by engaging in war tax resistance. It is time for the people to divest from the U.S. war machine. This act of protest has the potential to help us take our power back, and there are many ways for us to resist.
War Tax Resistance is direct, nonviolent, action we can all take every day. Action that voices our steadfast refusal to fund policies that disregard international law, human rights, and environmental justice. We are taking collective action now to end the widespread suffering our tax dollars fund. We hope you’ll consider joining us as we follow the lead of existing resisters who have advocated for and applied varied War Tax Resistance techniques over the past hundred years.
Stand in solidarity with this action by beginning or refining your own practice of federal War Tax Resistance in 2025.
This will require:
⁃ Paying your Federal Social Security and Medicare taxes (because they are direct payment programs that support people in need).
⁃ Paying your local State taxes.
⁃ Paying at least a portion of your federal taxes, in support of other federal direct payment programs (like food stamps, student education grants, housing, financial, and international aid).
⁃ Redirecting a percentage of any withheld federal taxes into direct payment community care programs, like mutual aid funds or bail funds.
⁃ Tailoring your war tax resistance actions to your personal tax situation and risk tolerance.
Resistance should also involve any combination of these personalized war tax resistance techniques:
⁃ Living simply, below the line at which your income becomes taxable, and filing taxes as you would normally.
⁃ Adjusting W-4 withholding to prevent overpayment of taxes throughout the course of the year. (For those consistently receiving federal income tax refunds).
⁃ Voicing your objection to your tax dollars being used for the purposes of militarization and war.
⁃ Refusing to pay a symbolic amount of your federal taxes, or a more significant percentage.
We are taking this action to hold our representatives in Congress accountable for decisions that have contributed our tax dollars to systems of violence, oppression, and mass death. We’re sending a clear mandate to reprioritize federal spending towards preservation of human rights and directly funding community care.”
We have the power to redirect our funds away from war and towards direct payment community care programs. Learn more about this action and find updated War Tax Resistance resources on our site.
A better world is possible, and we’ll build it together for each other.
In solidarity and hope,
Vote No Evil