The Internal Revenue Service Gentlemen:

Please find enclosed your tax form notifying me of an unpaid balance of assessments for what I take to be my telephone excise tax.

In the spring of 1970, I notified you that I would withhold payment of this telephone tax which was specifically enacted as a tax to support expenditures incurred in the Vietnam War. I indicated that I found that war to be morally indefensible and to be degrading to our nation, and that I took the step of conscientiously withholding payment of the telephone excise tax as a symbolic protest against a war being illegally waged in the name of the American people.

I do not oppose taxes in general, and indeed feel that citizens of a nation ought to share in the responsibility and therefore the payment of appropriate services required within the nation. However, the war in Vietnam into which our nation was led through deceit and falsehood and whose cost in lives and property of the Vietnamese and other peoples of Indochina has been incredibly large is not something for which I can in good conscience give my support or feel deserving of tax monies. The will of millions of people in the United States has been regularly thwarted as they have attempted to register their dissent and withdraw their support for the war, and today as America's participation enters its second decade, I will take this opportunity of once more indicating my belief that citizens must take conscientious action when they believe things are being done in their name without their support.