The Spirit of ’76: An Interview With Vivien Kellems

Outlook is proud to present an exclusive interview with Vivien Kellems, 76-year-old defender of the rights of single people and bane of bureaucrats from Connecticut election officials to the minions of the Infernal Revenue Service. The interview was conducted by Walter Block, Gary Greenberg and Jerry Klasman. Walter Block is an economics professor at Baruch College, C.U.N.Y., and editor of Outlook; Gary Greenberg is a Legal Aid attorney and regular contributor to Outlook; and Jerry Klasman is the Chairperson of the New York State Free Libertarian Party as well as Outlook’s photography director.

Greenberg: Miss Kellems, you’ve just spoken at the Hunter Festival of Life Conference with several hundred young people in attendance. What were your reactions to this experience?

Kellems: Well, this is the youngest audience I’ve had, and I was very happy to speak to this group and quite delighted at the response, because most of those young people have a stake in freedom.

Greenberg: And did you have any particular reaction to the fact that there were young people with beards and long hair? You’re associated with conservatives, and people like this are usually a target of the conservative movement.

Kellems: (Laughs) It’s been a fashion off and on throughout history that man have long hair. I don’t mind people wearing hair the way they like it. I don’t personally think it’s as becoming as shorter hair. But if they like long hair, so what? I wear my hair the way I want it, why shouldn’t they?

Block: Miss Kellems, you’ve been asked if you were a crusader in the fight to repeal the income tax, and you have said you weren’t, because it’s not you who’s causing the trouble; rather, it’s the U.S. government. Would you explain that?

Kellems: Well, it’s certainly quite true that I never intended to get into anything like this. I’m 76 years old. It’s time I sat by the fireplace and knitted. The thing is, I don’t know how to knit. I simply made an issue of this to try to get a test case. But you cannot get a test case unless you break the law. That’s the only way you can do it. It’s true that when you do this, you do it at your peril, because if you lose, you pay the penalty. I’ve suspended payment of my income tax to test the Constitutionality of taxing single people for their marital status. It’s as simple as that.

Greenberg: What do you mean by saying you “suspended payment?”

Kellems: I haven’t paid any income tax since April, 1969.

Greenberg: Are there any conditions under which you would resume payment?

Kellems: Why, yes, if they’ll pay me what they owe me plus 6%, I will start paying again, but not at the rate for single people. They’ve got married people who are permitted to split their incomes and pay at the lower rate, and I don’t think that is fair.

Klasman: Does this mean, Miss Kellems, that you ignore the IRS altogether, or do you file a return?

Kellems: I file a return. You see, if you file a return, they cannot lodge criminal charges against you. But I don’t put any figures in. I just put my name and address at the top, and sign it at the bottom.

Greenberg: Well, what do they do when they get this return every year?

Kellems: They accept it.

Greenberg: Do they do anything? Is there any follow-up?

Kellems: Oh, there have been considerable goings on ever since I started it. I’ve been to court three times and they’ve hauled me into the office in Hartford several times to get my books and papers. I haven’t supplied them with books and papers because the Fourth Amendment says I don’t have to.

Greenberg: Well, do they accept that?

Kellems: What can they do? They do all the routine things. They give you a thirty-day letter, they give you a ninety-day letter, and then they take you to court. They take you to the tax court in Washington, which, of course, isn’t a true court. It’s the offspring of the Internal Revenue. It was set up as a board by the Internal Revenue. It’s not a court set up by our judicial system, and, as far as I can see, the main reason for that court is to cheat the American people out of a jury trial.

Block: Let me ask you a question about something slightly different than what you’ve been associated with. As I understand it, you disagree with the inequities of taxing single people at a higher rate than other people. It’s long been my view, however, that taxes themselves are suspect, at the very least, and illegitimate at worst, whether for single people or married people.

Kellems: I absolutely agree with you. The trouble with this country is excessive taxation, and the basic cause of inflation in this country is taxes. It’s so stupid to keep on adding taxes, and then have wage and price controls to keep the prices down. I very often illustrate this with a chair. Take a wooden chair. Every time anyone touches that chair, from the time they cut the tree down in the forest, until the man delivers that chair to your home, every person who touches it pays an income tax, and his share of the income tax is added to the price of that chair. Now, if they would lower these taxes, prices will go down.

Block: You say taxes are excessive, and I don’t think there’s anyone who would disagree with that. But how would you draw the line between excessive tax and a proper tax? In other words, suppose I were to say that the only proper tax is no tax, how would you feel about that?

Kellems: I feel you’ve got to have some form of taxation. I don’t know how you can have civilized government without taxation. We tried it in the first United States, under the Articles of Confederation, and we almost failed and lost our country because Congress did not have the power to reach out and get the taxes it had to have, and the state legislatures would not vote them. You must have some form of taxation. But I look at this thing in Washington as a juggernaut. The juggernaut is a mythical monster that not only crushed its victims, but, in order to survive, had to turn around and devour them. This is what the Federal Government is doing. It is crushing the American taxpayer and actually devouring the American taxpayer. Presently, if this keeps up, we will not have a country. I think the whole thing is ready to blow sky-high.

Greenberg: In order to cut taxes, obviously we’ve got to stop spending on certain types of things. Are there any particular costly projects that you’d like to see done away with?

Kellems: Thousands of them. Practically every scheme and project that they’ve hatched down there in Washington. But, of course, they are not going to stop spending as long as they have the money to spend. The thing to do is to stop the money from going to Washington in the first place.

Greenberg: How can we do that?

Kellems: By putting a limitation on the amount the Federal Government can take from anyone’s income. I don’t know why it is, but in my study of taxes, and it’s gone all the way back to the time of Joseph selling the Egyptians into slavery with their own money, this percentage of about 20% keeps cropping up in one civilization after another. In Egypt they paid in kind; they paid the tax in farm animals, fowls or grain, or in whatever they had, but the amount was about 20% of their income. I was talking with Wilbur Mills just a few weeks ago, and I pointed out to him that he could be one of the true greats of this century if he would advocate a limitation on the amount that the Federal government can take from any one income. He wrote down 25% and said, “What would you think of that?” said, “I’d go along with it, but I would prefer 20%.” Now this is a long-range hope—I’m not sure we can ever get it—but it would, in my opinion, solve a lot of problems.

Klasman: You observed, Miss Kellems, that the single individual pays a penalty for being single, but you’ve also observed that married couples where both partners work pay a penalty too. What is that penalty?

Kellems: Well, it varies with income. Now a couple who got a divorce in Detroit recently saved $400 a year on their income tax. The wife works and she makes about $12,000 a year and her husband makes an equal amount. This is a substantial income. But on a $25,000 income they are penalized practically a thousand dollars. This is in addition to their income tax. They have to pay a thousand dollars extra because they both work. That’s idiotic. What other criterion can you get for taxation? What are they going to reach at next—the color of your eyes, or the church you belong to, or the political party? Where do they end if they start this thing?

Greenberg?: Will you tell us a little bit about how single people start getting shafted?

Kellems: That’s a lovely word. Well, it came about because in 1948, the Congress passed the so-called Community Property Law, which means the wife owns one-half of the Community Property and one-half the income. She actually owns it; it’s hers. This permits married people all over the country to pay at a lower rate. In granting this privilege Congress left the single people high and dry and they continued to pay at the old, higher rates.

Now, I’d like to make one thing clear. I think I have as many married people behind me as I have single people. And it’s easy to understand. I doubt if there are many families in this country that don’t have at least one unmarried person—a grandma, or grandpa, or Aunt Bea, or a son or daughter. Particularly the young people. Why should young people starting out on their first job—many of these youngsters have college debts—pay a penalty because they’re single? It just doesn’t make sense.

Block: I’d like to talk a little about tactics and strategy, and maybe get into the whole legitimacy question. First, what tactics do you think are proper for you to pursue besides court cases, if any?

Kellems: We have two sources to go to. Many people feel that if the Supreme Court decides against them, then that’s the end, they can’t go any further. This is not true. The Congress has the power to reverse the actions of a Supreme Court. This was proven in the case of the income tax itself. Congress passed an income tax law in 1894, and the Supreme Court declared that this law was unconstitutional, and it was necessary to actually amend the Constitution. This is what Congress did. It amended the Constitution so that the Federal Government could levy an income tax. This is what I said in testifying before the House Ways and Means Committee. I said, “We come to you. You are our Representatives. We elect you, we send you down here to take care of us, and we appeal to you—it’s true we’re going to the Supreme Court, but you have the power to give us our Constitutional rights.

Block: These tactics and strategies, while not limited to the Supreme Court, would be limited to what is legal. Would you not advocate or use any extralegal methods?

Kellems: No, I am a firm believer in the Constitution. I think that the Constitution of the United States is the greatest system of government that was ever given to a free people. If people understood their Constitution, and the rights that they have, they would never part with one tiny little bit of it. And I don’t believe that you will get anywhere by illegal acts. People may think I am acting illegally when I suspend payments of income tax. I am not! I am within my rights! You have a right in this country to a test case. I think it is unique to this system of government. I don’t believe it exists in any other country. And I would point out to you that in New Haven we have a most fantastic birth-control law because our law said that it was illegal to use a contraceptive. How they intended to police the law I’ll never know. But this was the law. So some of our outstanding citizens in Connecticut set up a birth-control clinic and dispensed birth-control information. They were taken to court, they went to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court said that the law was unconstitutional. This is right. That’s all I’ve done. I’m just asking for a test case and, in the meantime, I’ve been filing a brief with Congress to get them to do something about it.

Block: Let’s take these friends of yours who were involved in the contraceptive case—or we can take people involved in draft cases or any other case like that—but the contraceptive case will do. Let us suppose the facts were different than they actually were. Namely, that the court found against them and the Court put them in jail.

Kellems: I think they ran that risk when they broke the law.

Block: Right. But suppose these people broke out of jail. Suppose that they didn’t harm any person or property or anything like that, but they just figured that they had done nothing wrong, and if that’s the way these judges are going to interpret the Constitution, they’re not going to give any sanction to that process. They think they are free, and they have a right to be free, and let’s suppose they break out of jail. Would you cheer this, or would you be against this?

Kellems: I would be inclined to cheer it, personally, but I think if we all do these things we would have chaos in this country. I think in a civilization we must have laws, but the laws must be fair and equitable. People will have no respect for laws if they are not fair or if judges are corrupt. I think we’ve had some cases in this country where it’s been proven that our courts are not effective.

Block: Would you have given the same advice to someone in Nazi Germany, say in 1939 or so? Would you have told him to obey the law even though the law was later shown by the Nuremberg trials to be against human law?

Kellems: They had no choice in Germany. I was there and Hitler came into power while I was staying in a German household. I know what Hitler did to the people of Germany, not only to the Jews. The first thing he did was to disarm Germany. I had one of my friends say to me, “You think we can fight back? What with, table knives?” That’s why I am very opposed to disarming the American people.

Greenberg: You’ve been a very articulate and effective spokesperson for the conservative movement, and, I believe, you’ve been friends with William F. Buckley. Yet some of the things you do seem to border on civil disobedience. At least setting up test cases by trying to break what appears to be the law will seem like civil disobedience to many people. I don’t think Bill Buckley approves of those activities. Have you had any reactions from Bill Buckley on some of the things you’ve done?

Kellems: No, I haven’t had the chance to talk with Bill. We were on the David Frost show together, but I’ve never actually sat down and talked with Bill about it. I’ve known him a good many years. I’ve known him ever since he came out of college. He did, however, not too long ago, advocate a 20% limitation on the Federal income tax. [In his syndicated column, Buckley recently suggested that Miss Kellems would be a good replacement for Jeanne Westwood as Democratic Party Chairman—Ed.]

Klasman: Miss Kellems, you’ve had great difficulties and found it impossible to get this case tested in court. You’re working on an amendment to solve this situation, but if that isn’t passed by Congress, do you believe that if many people joined in the withholding of tax payments, that this would force the government into court to settle the issue?

Kellems: I didn’t make it clear. I have been to court. We were in the Tax Court and I lost in the Tax Court, but I expected to lose. I told you this Tax Court is impossible. One doesn’t go to the Tax Court, they bring you in. I said that we would lose in the Tax Court; we couldn’t possibly have won. But it is our right, our first step. Now the brief is practically finished to go to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York and then to go to the Supreme Court if necessary.

Klasman: Do you ever feel like giving up?

Kellems: We have been to court, but I think we just can’t give up. Now I’ve been three years at this. I thought I could get it done in a year, but I haven’t had experience with those experts down there in Washington. You must never give up. Look, you’re all young and strong, and I’m 76, and if my head is bloody but unbowed, you people can come along and do the same thing. No, you mustn’t give up. We step right in, we have a bill introduced again in the next Contress, we have thousands and thousands of tea bags mailed to them all over the United States. It’s the National Boston Tea Party, one of the most effective things I’ve ever done.

They just can’t bear it. They get stacks of the stuff; if you don’t drink tea, just use some coffee grounds—anything to attract attention.

Greenberg: What other types of notorious activities have you been involved in? I seem to remember some incident involving you in a voting booth, bringing in your own lunch, and they couldn’t get in there to take you out because they weren’t allowed to go into the booth.

Kellems: No that’s not quite right. We have a one-minute law in Connecticut. You are only permitted a minute to vote. Oh, can you get into the election laws in Connecticut! Well, I was trying to get the lock off the voting machine. We had a locked machine, and when you went in, you had to pull the column 1. This brought down the whole ticket, and so many people were afraid they wouldn’t know how to split the ticket. So I tried to knock the lock off. Well, they couldn’t do anything about it. I kept talking about it for a long time, so I went into the voting booth and sat there for nine hours. I didn’t take any lunch. I just sat there. People sent food all day, shoving it under the curtain. The second day, I sat at the end, and they have to have those machines attended even though you can sit there. Someone opened the curtain and said, “Would you like to have this milkshake?” I sat on the floor for nine hours. The next year they carried me out at the end. But that was all right; we got the lock off.

Greenberg: Did that stir any reaction at the conservative end of the movement?

Kellems: Well, the fact that I sat in the voting booth attracted attention and they knew they had to do something; they can’t have women sitting in voting booths for nine hours in this country, so we did get the lock off. But they left the Party’s letter on, and this was done by professionals. Now they are very sorry they did that. They’d like to have even the Party’s letter off.

Greenberg: What other kinds of activities have you been involved in?

Kellems: Not too many. You see, I’ve been in the catering business for thirty-five years and I was quite occupied, but I’ve always had an overweening interest in public affairs, and in 1948, I refused to collect withholding from my employees. This made quite a stir, and we went to court on that. I was trying to test the Constitutionality of the law. They bypassed me on that one. I got my money back that they seized from the bank— about $800.

Block: I’d like to ask you a question about other groups that might be thought to have something in common with what you’re doing. For instance, I would ask you about two groups: the War Tax Resistance people, who might be similar to you by some stretch of the imagination, and also the Women’s Liberation Movement. Could you comment on those two and what you think of them?

Kellems: I’m not very familiar with the War Resistance group. I think they’re withholding telephone taxes—aren’t they?—refusing to pay telephone tax. In my opinion, they have a perfect right to do it if they’re willing to go to court on a test case. The government won’t take them to court, they just want to make them pay the tax, don’t they? I have friends who do that and they just went and got their two dollars and a half or whatever it was.

I think these things are good because it points up the fact that people are just fed up with this insane, inhuman war which just goes on and on, and this is a form of registering protest.

As far as the Women’s Liberation Movement is concerned, I have always believed in legal equality for women. I think there’s no reason why a woman can’t still be very feminine but have the right to appear in court on the same basis as a man. She should be paid equally for equal work. They have come out against this tax on single people. Maybe I’m too old-fashioned. I’m just not accustomed to these methods. But remember, I’m an old lady. I spoke for the Equal Rights amendment, and advocated that long before some of these girls were born, and maybe they’re right. We used to lobby and we were very lady-like and we made speeches, and we went around and we got exactly nowhere! They came along and put on a few demonstrations and went down and seized control of the committees and Congress and all those things and, look, they got it passed. So maybe they’re right and we’re wrong.

Klasman: I believe that there are many hundreds of thousands of people who would like to join in this battle to a greater degree than sending a bag of tea to their Congressman. They don’t want, perhaps, to break laws, as you have avoided breaking laws, but they want to make a very overt move against the excessive taxation. Are there any ways that they could actively join you in this fight?

Kellems: Oh, yes. If they would write to me, I’ll put them on my mailing list. I have 25,000 letters. When I started out I was financing it all myself, and then it got beyond me because again I ran into large expenses I hadn’t been anticipating. People have sent me small sums. I’ve had financial support. I have a thousand checks at five dollars apiece, and that meant a great deal to me because people I mentioned are people to whom five dollars represents a real sacrifice.

For your information, I am very pessimistic about what’s going to happen if the Federal Government doesn’t wake up. These are the treasurer’s figures, not mine: In 1968, ten million people didn’t put any money in with their tax returns, and that increased by 27% over 1969. I’ll tell you where to get those figures. Ex-Senator Williams of Delaware, June, I think, 1969. The treasurer gave him a report and I have since talked with the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, Mr. Walters, and he confirmed the fact that people are not paying their income tax. Now, there’s probably more than one reason. Some of them don’t have the money to send, and some of them borrow the money at 6%. They can do this by paying the penalty when they couldn’t get the money at the bank. The fact remains that something has happened to them.

Greenberg: Where can they write you if they want to get in touch with you?

Kellems: Oh, it’s very easy. East Haddam, Connecticut.

Block: Gary Greenberg is running for Congress in the eighteenth Congressional District in New York and I am running for Assembly in the 65th Assembly District in New York on the Free Libertarian Party ticket. Now the Free Libertarian Party is a very new party. We just started three or four months ago. Among the programs that we have is opposition to the income tax. Gary, I know, has called for a $12,000 exemption from taxes. How do you relate to new political parties with views like this?

Kellems: I think they’re an awfully good thing. Fortunately, we can still begin new political parties in opposition. We skirted the edge of the philosophy of the income tax several times in this conversation, but I haven’t really committed myself. Let me explain. I am bitterly opposed to the principle of the income tax. I do not believe in the income tax. It has destroyed every society throughout history where it has been permitted to burgeon and do what it has in this country, and it is about to destroy this country. But I am very realistic. We got along for one hundred and twenty-five years without the income tax. The Constitution specifically forbids an income tax to the Federal Government. It didn’t say it in those words, but it said that any direct tax must be apportioned among the states in accordance with population. You can’t apportion an income tax with people. An income tax is on income; it is not on people. So, I am opposed to an income tax, but here it is, entrenched; it was passed as the sixteenth amendment by Congress and ratified by three-quarters of the states. But, as I pointed out this afternoon, it doesn’t repeal any other part of the Constitution. Let them have the income tax. But let us have our Constitutional rights under the fourth and fifth amendments. And let them collect it if they can. I don’t think you’re going to repeal it. We may be able to get a limitation. It’s still anathema to me, as anything that permits a strange person to come in and go into your personal and private affairs; even your love letters, your personal, intimate details, they seek out in the name of the income tax. I’m opposed to it.

Block: Several months ago Outlook ran a copy of the first income tax form under the caption, “Read it and weep.” The tax then was three per cent. We’ve come a long way since.

Klasman: You told us this afternoon that once you win this fight, you have some other surprises for us. You must have some other fights in mind.

Kellems: I think we must go on. First of all, I think that single people all over the country must get together and demand the end to thousands of discriminations against them. And there are a lot of single people who believe this, and they are going to do something about it. I am a single person and I run into this all the time. For example, I go down to Florida and go to a hotel. I pay the double rate, because I am single. They would not give a single person a different rate—you pay the double rate. I just cite that. There are thousands of discriminations against single people, but I don’t have great interest in opposing all of them. I absolutely oppose them, and there are groups organizing. My main interest in life however, is taxation; but the next thing I am going to do is to go back to Scotland and get my Ph.D. from Edenburgh University. That’s what started me on this whole mess. I have all the academic credits for the Ph.D., I have my Master’s Degree from the University of Oregon. I have another year at Columbia University, and Edinburgh was marvelous. They accepted my academic record, which was fifty years old.

Klasman: Marvelous!

Kellems: ...so I have the thesis half-written. Then I got bogged down in this fight because my research led me into it, and I have no intention of being side-tracked. All I have to do to get finished is go get three or four months to myself. I could finish this and get my degree. It’s an unfinished thing in my life and I am a very tidy person, I always like to finish everything. I was interrupted, I wasn’t able to get it. . . . my father died while I was in college and I didn’t have the money to publish the thesis, which in those days cost a thousand dollars. You had to put a hundred copies in the library at Columbia—what for, don’t ask me, because who ever looks at a Ph.D. thesis? But this is the first thing I’m going to do. Then I am planning to go back home and get going in this 20% tax limitation. I think we must all put our shoulders to the wheel on that one.

Block: Thank you very much, Miss Kellems.