Now that anyone can become well-versed in WTR by perusing the resources that are freely available on our website, local groups have much less interaction with folks wanting to learn about war tax resistance. In any given year, we have about 40,000 unique visitors to the NWTRCC website, who look at an average of nine pages on the website. These numbers, which I believe indicate serious interest, have remained steady.

Local groups have also played a role in supporting each other during periods of collection from the IRS. During the 1980s and early 1990s, it was also common have cars and houses seized by the IRS. Collection efforts dropped significantly after 2010 with the gutting of the IRS budget and property seizures dwindled to practically nothing after a change in IRS philosophy in the late-1990s. So another major role that local WTR groups provided also became less necessary.

With the $80 billion in additional funding that the IRS will receive over the next ten years, we will likely see an increase in collections. These collection efforts may have the unintended consequence of leading isolated war tax resisters to reach out to local groups or form local groups. Most of the calls I receive in the NWTRCC office are from long-time war tax resisters who have never been in contact with other war tax resisters. They call the office because of an action by the IRS that leads them to reach out for support.

At the last Tax Day protest I attended, 2017, in San Francisco, I noticed that over half of those present were people I had known from Northern California War Tax Resistance in the late 1980s. This is not hyperbole: I recently looked at a photo of this SF demonstration, and literally over half the group had been active 30 years before. That’s not a good indication this “movement” is growing. I notice NWRTCC Twitter posts go completely unreplied to, including a post asking that readers tweet their questions. This, to me, is a pretty good comment on war tax resistance in the US.