Last year I filed my 2023 tax return and purchased money orders on time, but didn't have the energy to write a letter to the IRS and my elected officials. Even though this letter says it's for the 2023 tax year, the statistics quoted are from 2025.
TO: Department of the Treasury Internal Revenue Service, P.O. Box 931000, Kansas City, MO 64999-0002
Copies to : Rep. Jefferson Shreve, Senator Todd Young, Senator Jim Banks, President Donald Trump
To my government representatives,
I am once again writing to explain why I will not pay the tax amount I owe to the federal government. I will instead pay the amount to groups working to heal the wounds of war and prevent future violence. According to Acts 5:29 in the Bible, “We must obey God rather than any human authority.” (NRSV). Currently the majority of every tax dollar goes to pay for past, present, and future wars. I can not pay for war. As much as I value our country’s laws, I believe that God’s laws must come first, and God tells us, “Thou shalt not kill.”
Over the past two years I have cried over the war between Israel and the Palestinians. There is no justification for Hamas militants murdering and kidnapping Israelis, and there is no justification for murdering thousands of Palestinians. It appears that Israel is attempting to wipe out the population of Gaza, not to mention the deaths on the West Bank, regardless of any connections to Hamas. Here are some reasons I can not contribute financially to this.
In fiscal year 2023, Israel received $3.3 billion in USA military aid (according to the Pew Research Center).
The United States is overwhelmingly the biggest supplier of arms to Israel. In 2023 69% of Israel's arm imports came from the USA, according to a 10/2024 report on international arms transfers by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
Israel has been the largest cumulative recipient of USA foreign aid since its founding, receiving about $310 billion (adjusted for inflation) in total economic and military assistance.
As of the 23rd of March, 2025, according to Gaza's Ministry of Health, at least 50,021 Palestinians have been killed and 113,274 wounded since Israel began attacking the besieged territory following October 7, 2023.
The 50,021 number is considered a conservative estimate, only counting the people who have been registered at health facilities across the Gaza Strip. There are many others buried without being registered or who have gone missing, trapped under piles of rubble.
Since October 7, 2023, Israel has killed at least 17,400 children, including 15,600 who have been identified (as of the 3rd of February, 2025). Again, many more are suspected to be buried under the rubble. An average of 30 children were killed every day over 535 days. That works out to killing a child in Gaza every 45 minutes. Whether it is one child or thousands of children killed, it is too many.
Many of the surviving children have endured the trauma of multiple wars, and all of them have spent their lives under the oppressive shadow of an Israeli blockade, affecting every aspect of their existence from birth.
Israeli forces recently struck the surgical building inside Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, one of the largest health facilities in Gaza.
In June 2024 the UN Human Rights Office published an assessment of six emblematic attacks by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in Gaza that led to high numbers of civilian fatalities raising serious concerns under the laws of war. “The requirement to select means and methods of warfare that avoid or at the very least minimise to every extent civilian harm appears to have been consistently violated in Israel’s bombing campaign," said High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk.
According to Amnesty International Israeli “strikes are likely direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects and must be investigated as war crimes. Fresh evidence of deadly unlawful attacks in the occupied Gaza Strip... demonstrates how Israeli forces continue to flout international humanitarian law, obliterating entire families with total impunity.”
Since the start of Israel's war with Hamas on October 7, 2023, the United States has enacted legislation providing at least $12.5 billion in direct military aid to Israel, which includes $3.8 billion from a bill in March 2024 and $8.7 billion from a supplemental appropriations act in April 2024. Other analysts have reported that Israel received $17.9 billion in U.S.A. military aid during this period, a figure that additionally accounts for the cost to the U.S.A. Defense Department of replenishing the stock of weapons provided to Israel.
I sincerely believe that Israel’s continued destruction of the Gaza strip endangers Israelis as well, provoking more violence rather than building peace.
It pains me not to pay all of the federal taxes I owe each year. I want to fulfill my financial responsibilities to the country I live in without denying my conscience and faith. Unfortunately current tax dollars help fund a horrific war rather than meet human needs. Given a choice of paying to kill or dealing with financial penalties and the threat of prison, I have to choose your penalties. I won’t pay for war.
My 2023 tax return said that I owed $1,863 in taxes. Instead I donated $1,000.00 to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund addressing the medical and humanitarian crisis facing Palestinian youths, and $863.00 to Doctors Against Genocide, a global coalition of healthcare workers active in Palestine. These non-profit groups are working to meet needs of the people suffering from the destruction and killing our USA government is funding. I am not benefitting financially from my refusal to pay for war. I want every cent I owe paid to save lives, not to destroy lives.
Sincerely,
Susan Lee Barton
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