August 7, 2003 | Read Time: 1 minute
The IRS has sued the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends for refusing to garnish the wages of one of its employees, a tax resister who says she has religious objections to supporting the military.
The service says that Priscilla Adams, a Quaker activist, owes more than $42,000 in back taxes, penalties, and interest because she withheld at least a portion of her federal income taxes from 1986 to 1996. The agency plans to impose a 50-percent penalty of more than $21,000 on the Quaker organization.
Since 1996, the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting has withheld money from Ms. Adams’s paychecks and placed it in an escrow account to which the IRS has access. But the group says it does not wish to help the federal agency by garnishing wages to collect back taxes and fines.
Ms. Adams asked the IRS in 1996 to set up a peace-tax fund for conscientious objectors, and sued to have the penalties rescinded. But the U.S. Tax Court and the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled against her, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear her case.
Ms. Adams, who earns about $36,000 a year, says she has lent the amount in dispute to charities pending the outcome of her disagreement with the government, and will ask for it back only if the IRS prevails.
