Why do peace activists celebrate Pi Day?
The story of war tax resisters and a pie chart
Big Idea of the Week
March 14 is known affectionately by math teachers and other assorted nerds as Pi Day. (Get it? π? 3.14?). With this momentous holiday approaching, I thought I would take the opportunity to explain why this day has also been embraced by…. peace activists.
Let me back up.
While doing research for My Tax Dollars, I became deeply interested in a community of peace activists who engage in tax resistance as a form of conscientious objection to war.
To paraphrase the argument made by many war tax resisters in the U.S., they cannot in good conscience serve in the military, due to moral or religious commitments to pacifism, or ethical concerns about specific wars. So how can they pay for others to go to war in their names (i.e., with their tax dollars)?
I was fascinated by their efforts to weigh their responsibilities as citizens against what they saw as competing moral obligations. I interviewed current and former war tax resisters, spent time in their homes, read their memoirs, and collected hundreds of their protest letters to the IRS explaining why they were not paying all of the taxes they owe.
In the process, I made a surprising realization. To learn about war tax resistance in the U.S. today is to learn about a pie chart.
As I write in My Tax Dollars:
The pie chart is presented on a one-page flyer titled “Where Your Income Tax Money Really Goes.” It is released around March of each year, “perfect for Tax Day leafletting.” During my research, I came across this pie chart more times than I could count—resisters pressed copies of it into my hands when we met, distributed stacks of printed flyers at local events, enclosed paper copies or provided links to the online version in their protest letters to the IRS, and referenced it in their published essays and books.
On the “Where Your Income Tax Money Really Goes” flyer, the pie chart is rendered in black and fuchsia, with the percentage of income taxes that goes toward nonmilitary expenses shaded black and the share of current and past military expenses shaded fuchsia. In fiscal year 2024, the pie chart showed that 43 percent of income tax dollars would go toward military purposes. This number has fluctuated between 40 and 55 percent since the early 1990s.
You might notice that in the short time between the publication of my book and the release of the 2027 pie chart, that the share of military expenses increased from 43 percent to an estimated 58 percent.
In previous years, the flyer also contained an explanation of why the figures on the pie chart differ from the official ones released by the federal government. In particular, the authors explain that official government figures are “a distortion of how our income tax dollars are spent because it includes Trust Funds (e.g., Social Security), and most of the past military spending is not distinguished from nonmilitary spending.”
The pie chart does what official figures do not—it offers Americans a more inclusive picture of how their tax dollars are being allocated. Moreover, it attempts to demarcate how many of those dollars will be used to fund past and present wars.
By symbolically earmarking otherwise unmarked forms of military spending in an easy-to-read infographic, the pie chart has become an indispensable consciousness-raising tool for the antiwar movement.
The web page where the flyer is posted lists various ways activists can use it: to leaflet “year-round and on Tax Day”; as “a focus for forums and panels and workshops and more!”; and as a basis for letters to “elected officials, letters-to-the-editor, and posts online. Send and share copies of this flyer. Explain your budget priorities for a better world.”
The pie chart is also central to the practice of war tax resistance itself, guiding resisters’ decisions about how much of their income tax they should withhold and functioning as a reference document in their communications with the IRS.
For example:
Some resisters refuse only a token amount of the taxes they owe. For example, the group $10.40 for Peace (a reference to the IRS Form 1040, the Individual Income Tax Return) encourages people to refuse to pay $10.40 of what they owe the IRS and redirect it to an organization promoting peace.
Other resisters use the pie chart more directly to guide their resistance, refusing to pay the share of income taxes that is spent on current and past military expenses (according to the chart) and redirecting those funds to organizations supporting peace.
Others refuse to pay all of the taxes they owe, arguing that because money is fungible, any dollar paid to the federal government increases the pot of money from which it can fund war.
Finally, some choose to withdraw more fully from the war economy. They intentionally live under the taxable income level, to legally avoid paying any taxes and also to lighten their ecological and economic footprint more generally.
These experiments in “simple living” can actually be quite complicated to maintain. But compared with those who refuse to pay the taxes they owe, writer and activist Frida Berrigan refers to this group (of which she and her family are a part) as “low-risk” or “no risk” tax resisters because their resistance is not unlawful.
The other forms of tax resistance do have risks. Legal repercussions vary from owing interest and fines on back taxes to having wages garnished or property seized. In one especially high-profile instance, a couple active in the antiwar community lost their home.
But this kind of enforcement action is rare, given the relatively small amounts of taxes most resisters owe. More often, resisters spend years responding to (or ignoring) form letters from the IRS. In this correspondence, they also rely on the pie chart—citing figures from its annual calculations or tucking printed copies of the flyer into their response letters.
Ed Hedemann [who created the War Resister’s League’s first pie chart in 1977 and] helps produce the chart each year, has also used it in his own communications with the IRS. Upon being summoned to the Brooklyn IRS office in 1998, Hedemann appeared but declined to produce any financial records; he brought only the pie chart.
To learn more about how war tax resisters are observing Pi Day this year, visit the website of the he National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, a hub for war tax resisters of various sorts. In their latest newsletter, they describe local groups’ plans for Pi Day.
For more about war tax resistance, and how the arguments of war tax resisters fit into the broader landscape of Americans’ moral arguments about taxpaying, check out My Tax Dollars: The Morality of Taxpaying in America.
[Note: This essay was adapted from My Tax Dollars, p.115-118]
Something Light
Pi Day is Albert Einstein’s birthday?!?!
Do you know the history of Pi Day? According to the San Francisco Exploratorium:
Founded in 1988 at the Exploratorium, Pi (π) Day has become an international holiday, celebrated live and online all around the world. The numbers in the date (3/14) match the first three digits of the mathematical constant pi.
Also, apparently:
March 14 is Pi (π) Day, the annual celebration of a never-ending number—and Albert Einstein’s birthday.
🤯
Learn more about America’s nerdiest holiday here.
Also, I’m curious: what is your favorite pie?
