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I am not paying American war taxes this year. Will you join me? | Clara Vondrich

More than $20bn. That’s roughly the cost of our military operation in Iran to date.

Tax day is a month away. If you’re like me, it makes your stomach turn to watch the US practice regime change in the Middle East – again. If you’re like me, the reckless murder of more than 150 little girls in the name of “liberating” Iranian women fills you with rage. The worst part? You and I literally paid for this.

Today, our government dollars at work look like the hellscape that was Tehran, where our military intentionally blew up oil storage facilities whose burning black rain will deliver cancer to generations to come. We are financing chemical warfare, a war crime, banned under the Geneva conventions. All of this, of course, against the backdrop of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, where up to 70% of the weapons come from the United States and the revolting and deadly paramilitary operations of our Department of Homeland Defense and ICE.

The American people did not sign up for this. Congress was neither consulted nor did it approve the opening attack on 28 February, contrary to the separation-of-powers bedrock our country was built upon. Most of us are fed up with unjustified conflicts and “forever wars”. In fact, 70% of voters opposed potential action in Iran before the first bombs fell. A majority continue to oppose the war now, and support will keep eroding as gas and food prices rise.

We are not without tools to resist. Our nation has a deep history of civil disobedience that has changed lives and laws. A tool right for this moment is a national war tax boycott. This is not a rebuke of taxation in general: I believe in contributing my fair share to the common pot. But this war has short-circuited our democratic processes and our representatives were not consulted – call it taxation without representation.

War tax resistance has a venerable tradition dating back to days before our nation was even born. In 1637, the Algonquin Nation refused to pay taxes to the Dutch to support their new military fort. Quakers were the first organized religion to oppose wartime taxation as a rule. The modern wartime tax resistance movement can be traced to the second world war and the building of the Pentagon in 1941. War tax resisters were a big part of opposition to the Vietnam war, with an estimated 200,000 to 500,000 people refusing to pay federal taxes.

Not paying war taxes is just one side of the coin. War tax resisters redirect the taxes they would have paid to another cause or organization. Redirecting tax dollars is essential because we believe in paying taxes for common goods like public transit and healthcare. We have a chance to divert taxes from taking lives to building lives. In the current era, we might choose relief aid for those trapped in one of the war zones linked to current US aggression. The whole point is that we have an opportunity to divert taxes from taking lives to building lives.

While some of us may have filed our 2025 taxes already, many more of us have not. The next round of No Kings rallies is scheduled for 28 March, and it is expected to be the largest nonviolent protest in American history. If those protests were coupled by a pledge by participants not to pay federal income taxes – or at least the part that goes toward supporting the war machine – this could be a clapback at the administration that would be registered around the world, including our allies in Europe now being bullied to join Trump’s terror games.

That said, not paying taxes is a scary thing to do. And there can be impacts to credit or other penalties. Nevertheless, many war tax resisters never face consequences. Since the second world war, only two individuals have served time for non-payment of taxes in protest of US military interventions. This does not include willful fraud against the IRS to lower tax liability. That is not the kind of resistance contemplated here. War tax resistance is not about deceit, but rather a principled stand against your money being used for militarization, killing and associated environmental destruction.

Estimates vary, but up to 50% of our federal taxes go towards military spending, so non-payment of an amount in this range is a good rule of thumb. Other options are possible too, as laid out by the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (nwtrcc.org).

The War Resisters League and the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee lead the war tax movement today, though the term “movement” is too strong because so many resisters prefer to be private in their activism. (At the same time, many do include letters of protest with their unpaid tax returns so that the government is on notice.)

Silent resistance is untenable now. Public and open rejection of our “peace” president and his military adventurism is the only way for this tactic to have its maximum effect – both in drawing down defense coffers, and in providing a practical and actionable way for people to get involved that goes beyond signs and slogans. In numbers there is power. When those numbers funnel energy toward direct action for a common outcome, the world can change.

As a professional with a family, I don’t really relish a showdown with the IRS. But I think it’s important to have skin in the game: the little girls at the elementary school in Minab just paid the ultimate price; their families are wrecked for life. As of 7 March, more than 73,000 Palestinians have perished in the Gaza conflict. The least I can do is put a little skin in the game.

Refusing to consent to government overreach through civil disobedience is a bedrock value that has kept our democracy intact. It is the portal through which civil rights were born for women and Black people, and continues to be used as a shield against injustice to people and the environment. Civil disobedience enlivens our democracy and shakes up power structures that have become overbearing, overconfident and simply need to be … over.