Peace
Tax at the Council of Europe (4)
The Peace Tax – Frequently Asked Questions
•
Do people who want the right to conscientious objection
to the payment of taxation for military purposes want to pay less
tax?
•
Do people who want the right to conscientious objection
to the payment of taxation for military purposes not want to pay
for the armed forces?
•
How would a taxpayer know how to calculate the proportion
of their tax that is used for military purposes?
•
Should it not be for government to decide on how to
spend public funds?
•
Would governments not simply use a greater proportion of other people’s
taxes for military purposes instead?
•
We don’t just pay direct taxes. What about VAT?
•
The government does not accept the concept of hypothecation.
How can the taxes paid by an individual be allocated away from military
expenditure in that situation?
•
Would this not open the floodgates to other campaigns
who do not agree with certain aspects of public funding?
Also
on this page:
•
Footnotes
•
Other Papers in this Series
Do
people who want the right to conscientious objection to the payment
of taxation for military purposes want to pay less tax?
No.
Our campaign respects the right of governments to levy taxes on
the basis of democratic decision making on all citizens in an equitable
way. Our campaign argues that the taxes we pay should not be used
for military purposes because we have for reasons of conscience
or profound conviction arising from religious, ethical, moral, humanitarian,
philosophical or similar motives an objection to participating in
military activity. In other words, for reasons of conscience or
profound conviction we are unable to be complicit in military activities
because implicit in such activities is the taking of life.
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Do
people who want the right to conscientious objection to the payment
of taxation for military purposes not want to pay for the armed
forces?
Yes.
The truth is we cannot. In the same way in which we say that we
cannot serve in the armed forces because our conscience will not
allow us to be complicit in activities which involve or are geared
to the legalised taking of life, we cannot in all conscience pay
for such activities.
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How
would a taxpayer know how to calculate the proportion of their tax
that is used for military purposes?
This
is an important question, but not for this discussion. Here, we
argue for the application of established practice (i.e. the application
of Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights to the conscientious
objection to the participation in military activity) to the participation
through payment. Once the application of this established practice
to this form of participation has been agreed, we can enter into
discussions with governments on the practical steps necessary to
make this happen.
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Should
it not be for government to decide on how to spend public funds?
Yes,
to a point. We are not campaigning for the popular control of public
funds through individual decision making generally. We argue that
the contribution of funding through taxes to the military activities
of a country is different from all other public spending because
implicit in military activity is the legalised taking of life. We
would not wish to prescribe to governments how to spend the funds
redirected to non-military purposes beyond demanding that they be
spent for non-military purposes and that there are mechanisms in
place that allow for transparency to prove that they have been spent
for non-military purposes.
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Would
governments not simply use a greater proportion of other people’s
taxes for military purposes instead?
That
is possible. Governments must decide what they do about that question.
Similarly, governments recruit conscripts in the numbers required
from among the population willing to serve in the military. However,
by making the right to conscientious objection (both to military
service and to payment of taxation for military purposes) available
and accessible, those citizens who wish to exercise this right can
do so. In practice, over time, numbers of objectors will increase
and in that way a message will be sent to government on how citizens
view military activity.
Applying
the established principle of conscientious objection to the area
of military taxation will not abolish the military. It allows citizens
who have for reasons of conscience or profound conviction arising
from religious, ethical, moral, humanitarian, philosophical or similar
motives an objection to participating in military activity to do
so effectively.
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We
don’t just pay direct taxes. What about VAT?
Again,
this is a relevant and important question. But it is a question
for another discussion. Here, we are asking for the application
of the established principle to the participation in military activity,
in this case through payment. The details of how this can be applied
in each Member State of the Council of Europe needs to be addressed
once the application of this established principle has been agreed.
There
are ways in which indirect taxes could be covered. One way would
be to agree that all military expenditure is only funded from revenues
which come from direct taxation. Another would be to assess on the
basis of average income bands the amount of VAT and other indirect
taxes a citizen is likely to pay in addition to direct taxes and
to apply a calculated higher rate of redirection to direct taxation
based on that calculation. A third option would be to redirect all
direct taxes paid by a conscientious objector to non-military purposes.
In short, there are ways of dealing with the issue. But the establishment
of the principle comes first.
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The
government does not accept the concept of hypothecation[1]. How
can the taxes paid by an individual be allocated away from military
expenditure in that situation?
The
discussion around the conscientious objection to military taxation
has been hindered for some time by diverting it to technicalities
of how it could be implemented. To reiterate, here we wish to establish
the principle.
However,
it is not correct to say that governments do not accept the concept
of hypothecation. Hypothecation means that taxes are raised specifically
for a particular purpose and only spent on that purpose. There are
a number of examples where governments do use this approach. Some
of these are:
•
TV licences in the UK
• Road fund tax in the UK
• National Insurance Contributions in the UK
• Church Taxes in Germany
Would
this not open the floodgates to other campaigns who do not agree
with certain aspects of public funding?
No.
We are arguing here that the conscientious objection to the payment
for military activity is a matter of conscience or profound conviction
arising from religious, ethical, moral, humanitarian, philosophical
or similar motives. Any other campaign would have to establish the
application of similarly profound grounds for objections. Here,
we are not simply talking about something we don’t like. We
are talking about matters in which we, in all conscience and based
on religious, ethical, moral, humanitarian, and philosophical motives
cannot participate. That is a big hurdle to prove. It does not look
like a floodgate to us.
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If
you have other questions about our proposal which are not addressed
here, please e-mail them to mweitsch@qcea.org,
fax them to us on 0032 2 230 63 70 or send them in the post to QCEA,
Square Ambiorix 50, B-1000 Brussels, Belgium. We will then address
the question and, if it is of general interest, we will add the
question and our response to it to this briefing paper.
Footnotes
[1]
Hypothecation in the context of taxation means the collection of
taxes for a specific defined purpose; i.e. the taxes collected in
this way are earmarked and there is a commitment to spend them in
a particular way. Although in general governments do not collect
taxes in this way and rather put all tax revenues into one pot to
fund all government spending on the basis of political decision
making, there are examples of hypothecated taxes.
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Other
Papers in this Series
(1)
What is the Council of Europe HTML
PDF (278kb)
(2)
Freedom of thought, conscience, and religion and Conscientious Objection
in the Council of Europe HTML
PDF (256kb)
(3)
The Logic of Extending the Right to Conscientious Objection to Taxation
HTML PDF
(254kb)
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