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The National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund (NCPTF) is a non-profit organization located in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1971 to address conscientious objection to military taxation.
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The National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund (NCPTF) is a non-profit organization located in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1971 to address conscientious objection to military taxation.
The campaign exists solely to pass Peace Tax legislation in the United States. Such legislation would provide a way for some conscientious objectors to participate in the tax system without violating their beliefs. The proposed legislation, Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act , would amend the Internal Revenue Code to allow a conscientious objector to have his or her income, estate, and gift tax payments spent for non-military purposes only.
The campaign advocates and educates on behalf of citizens who are petitioning the government for the right to pay 100% of their taxes without violating their religious or ethical teachings. Voluntary contributions from some 2,000 individuals and from organizations support the campaign. The annual budget is $140,000. Forty seven national organizations officially endorse the effort.
The bill has yet to be passed. The United States House of Representatives held hearings on the proposal in 1992 and 1995. In the 114th congress, the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act has been sponsored by Representative John Lewis and as of January 2017 [update] has no cosponsors.
NCPTF was formerly called "National Council for a World Peace Tax Fund."
Pacifism is the opposition or resistance to war, militarism or violence. The word pacifism was coined by the French peace campaigner Émile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress in Glasgow in 1901. A related term is ahimsa, which is a core philosophy in Indian religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. While modern connotations are recent, having been explicated since the 19th century, ancient references abound.
A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, or religion. The term has also been extended to objecting to working for the military–industrial complex due to a crisis of conscience. In some countries, conscientious objectors are assigned to an alternative civilian service as a substitute for conscription or military service.
Conscription in Australia, also known as National Service following the Second World War, has a controversial history in the country which dates back to the implementation of compulsory military training and service in the first years of nationhood. Military conscription for peacetime service was abolished in 1972.
In the United States, military conscription, commonly known as the draft, has been employed by the U.S. federal government in six conflicts: the American Revolutionary War, the American Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. The fourth incarnation of the draft came into being in 1940, through the Selective Training and Service Act. It was the country's first peacetime draft. From 1940 until 1973, during both peacetime and periods of conflict, men were drafted to fill vacancies in the U.S. Armed Forces that could not be filled through voluntary means. Active conscription in the United States ended in 1973, when the U.S. Armed Forces moved to an all-volunteer military. However, conscription remains in place on a contingency basis and all male U.S. citizens, regardless of where they live, and male immigrants, whether documented or undocumented, residing within the United States, who are 18 through 25 are required to register with the Selective Service System. United States federal law also continues to provide for the compulsory conscription of men between the ages of 17 and 44 who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, U.S. citizens, and certain women for militia service pursuant to Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution and 10 U.S. Code § 246.
Tax resistance is the refusal to pay tax because of opposition to the government that is imposing the tax, or to government policy, or as opposition to taxation in itself. Tax resistance is a form of direct action and, if in violation of the tax regulations, also a form of civil disobedience.
Compulsory military training (CMT), a form of conscription, was practised for males in New Zealand between 1909 and 1972. Military training in New Zealand has been voluntary before then and ever since.
Katsuki James Otsuka was a Nisei Japanese American Quaker who was jailed as a conscientious objector during World War II, and later became a war tax resister.
The Center on Conscience & War (CCW) is a United States non-profit anti-war organization located in Washington, D.C., dedicated to defending and extending the rights of conscientious objectors. The group participates in the G.I. Rights Hotline, and works against all forms of conscription. There are no charges for any of CCW's services.
The Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors (CCCO) was a United States nonprofit organization dedicated to helping people avoid or resist military conscription or seek discharge after voluntary enlistment. It was active in supporting conscientious objectors ("CO's"), war resisters and draft evaders during the Vietnam War. Founded in Philadelphia in 1948 and dissolved in 2011, CCCO emphasized the needs of secular and activist COs, while other organizations supporting COs principally focused on religious objectors and/or legislative reform and government relations.
Conscientious objection to military taxation (COMT) is a legal theory that attempts to extend into the realm of taxation the concessions to conscientious objectors that many governments allow in the case of conscription, thereby allowing conscientious objectors to insist that their tax payments not be spent for military purposes.
The Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act is legislation proposed in the United States Congress that would legalize a form of conscientious objection to military taxation.
The End Conscription Campaign was an anti-apartheid organisation allied to the United Democratic Front and composed of conscientious objectors and their supporters in South Africa. It was formed in 1983 to oppose the conscription of all white South African men into military service in the South African Defence Force.
South African resistance to war has a long tradition, and a history that includes conscientious objectors, pacifists, deserters and draft dodgers, as well as those whose objections are based upon the notion of "just war" as opposed to unjust or illegal war.
Halil Savda is a Turkish conscientious objector who has been subjected to continued arrest and conviction for his refusal to serve mandatory military service – in violation of Turkish law.
The Johnson Amendment is a provision in the U.S. tax code, since 1954, that prohibits all 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations from endorsing or opposing political candidates. Section 501(c)(3) organizations are the most common type of nonprofit organization in the United States, ranging from charitable foundations to universities and churches. The amendment is named for then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, who introduced it in a preliminary draft of the law in July 1954.
Conscience: Taxes for Peace Not War is an advocacy group based in the United Kingdom. Conscience's primary aim is to change British tax law to allow conscientious objectors to military taxation to redirect the military portion of their taxes to a fund designed for international peacebuilding, conflict management, conflict prevention and other non-violent interventions. Quakers, Mennonites, Baháʼís, Buddhists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists and Haredim Jews all practice conscientious objection for reasons of faith. Many other individuals do so for reasons of conscience, some believing there is little moral difference between actually firing lethal weapons and paying someone else to do so. Conscience believes that to deny these individuals the right to redirect the military portion of their taxes is to deny them freedom of thought, conscience, and religion as enshrined in various national and international human rights laws.
Conscientious objection in the United States is based on the Military Selective Service Act, which delegates its implementation to the Selective Service System. Conscientious objection is also recognized by the Department of Defense.
Tax resistance in the United States has been practiced at least since colonial times, and has played important parts in American history.
While the Republic of Korea's Constitution states that all citizens, regardless of gender, sex, political or religious affiliation, should be afforded equal treatment under the law, some scholars, such as Intaek Hwang, claim that the culture of militarism is so pervasive that Conscientious Objectors are stripped of the rights discussed in the Constitution when universal male conscription became the law in 1948. A Conscientious Objector is defined as "an individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience and or religion" by the United Nation's Human Rights Commission. Since the signing of the Conscription Law in 1949, stating that every male 18 years of age must serve in the military, Conscientious Objectors, when found, are arrested and subject to violent punishments.