Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner of Colrain, Massachusetts, are tax resisters. For the last 12 years they've carefully filled out their 1040 forms and mailed them to the IRS, but there have been no checks in the envelopes. Instead, they've sent the exact amount of their taxes to local peace and service groups.

Kehler and Corner are pacifists who believe it would be immoral to contribute to covert wars and offensive weapons systems. They adhere to the Nuremburg Principle: Those who collaborate in crimes of inhumanity, even if they are obeying the law, are personally accountable for their actions.

The couple are obviously committed to their beliefs. When the IRS seized their bank accounts and set a date to auction off their house, Corner said, "It's a nice little home, but a lot of people have lost their homes because of the wars we've paid for."

Their resolve was strengthened by a letter they received on the same day as the notice of seizure on their house. A volunteer with "Witness for Peace" in Nicaragua wrote to them about a Nicaraguan friend who had been blown to pieces by a land mine, a mine manufactured in the U.S. and paid for with U.S. tax dollars. Kehler offered this reasoning for withholding his taxes: "None of us would want to pay money to inflict injuries or death on people in our own families or neighborhoods or communities. Yet, if you just enlarge the concept of family, neighborhood, and community, that's exactly what we're doing when we pay taxes for weapons that are used by the federal government on people in other countries."

Kehler was a draft protester during the Vietnam War. He refused induction and served 22 months in prison. Daniel Ellsberg later said that it was Kehler's principled example that gave him the courage to risk imprisonment himself by releasing the Pentagon Papers Ellsberg went on to say that you can never assume that these isolated acts of conscience are futile because, he said, "Courage is contagious." 

The couple, who are married and have a young daughter, are resolute. Kehler, a founder of the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign, says that they were moved to this form of civil disobedience by their concern that their 20 years of lawful protests against U.S. military policy had had little impact. "In a society that says, 'Money talks,' we're taking this action."