Chicagoans Refuse to Pay Federal Taxes to Protest Trump

A Chicago attorney who has been tear-gassed at deportation protests decided this spring she couldn’t write a $10,000 check to the federal government.

Rachel Cohen filed her federal taxes but didn’t pay them. She moved the owed amount into a high-yield savings account and paid only her state taxes. She’s not alone.

Some Chicagoans are refusing to pay federal taxes as a form of political protest, part of a decades-old “war tax resistance” movement that organizers say is drawing more new participants this year than at any point in recent memory. Anger at the Trump administration’s deportation tactics, U.S. support for Israel in the war in Gaza, and the U.S.-Israel war against Iran are driving the surge.

Cohen, a Harvard-educated attorney who works as an independent contractor, described the thinking that pushed her toward the decision.

“I was thinking about my willingness to be hit with chemical weapons,” Cohen said. “And I couldn’t square giving the federal government $10,000 with being willing to get arrested or put my body on the line.”

She had been tear-gassed or struck with pepper pellets roughly six times at protests against federal deportation practices before she made her choice.

The movement itself isn’t new. Lincoln Rice, a Milwaukee-based organizer with the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, hasn’t paid most of his federal taxes since 1998. But the current moment, Rice said, is unlike anything he’s seen across those nearly three decades.

“The watershed moment was the invasion of Gaza with mostly U.S.-funded weapons,” Rice said. “It’s been waves growing on waves. This definitely is our busiest tax season that I’ve witnessed.”

The numbers bear that out. The committee’s Instagram following grew from 157 in 2018 to 42,000 today. Website traffic tells the same story: roughly 40,000 unique visitors per year before the war in Gaza, 400,000 last year, and 300,000 so far this year, according to Rice.

The organization provides training on two broad forms of tax resistance. One it calls “simple living,” where participants reduce their income low enough that they owe no federal taxes, roughly $16,000 for an individual. The other approach covers any form of outright nonpayment.

Rice is blunt about the legal status of that second path.

“Any other way where you’re resisting,” he said, “is always illegal. It’s a form of civil disobedience. We want to make sure that’s very clear to people.”

The consequences range widely. The Internal Revenue Service can send threatening letters and assess a monthly penalty of up to 1% of the amount owed. Not filing a return is treated more severely, carrying a 5% penalty. In the most serious cases, the IRS can pursue wage garnishment, seize property, or seek criminal prosecution, though the latter is rare.

David Weisbach, a law professor at the University of Chicago, confirmed that criminal prosecutions against tax protesters are uncommon, though the legal exposure is real and shouldn’t be dismissed.

The Chicago Sun-Times first reported on the local participants, including Cohen’s account of moving her federal tax debt into savings rather than submitting payment.

Cohen’s approach reflects a calculation that organizers say more people are making. Pay the penalties, keep the money out of federal coffers as long as possible, and treat the fines as the cost of dissent. Whether that math holds up depends on how aggressively the IRS pursues individual cases, which historically has varied.

For Cohen, the decision wasn’t made impulsively. She’s a trained attorney who understands the risks. She thought through the consequences, put the money somewhere she can access it if enforcement comes, and concluded the act of protest was worth the exposure.

Her position sits inside a longer American tradition of conscientious tax resistance, one that stretches from anti-Vietnam War protesters in the 1960s and 1970s through Quaker communities that withheld taxes for generations on moral grounds. The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee has been operating since 1982, though its profile has stayed low outside pacifist and activist circles.

That’s changing. Organizers say the combination of Gaza, Iran, and aggressive domestic immigration enforcement has brought in professionals, parents, and first-time activists who hadn’t previously considered nonpayment as an option. The question now is whether the IRS, operating under an administration that has already cut agency staff and reshaped enforcement priorities, pursues these cases or lets them accumulate.

Rice said the committee continues to counsel participants to understand clearly that what they’re doing carries legal risk, and that the organization doesn’t offer legal protection, only information and community.