United
Methodist pastor to appeal IRS levy
on pension check
A UMNS Report By
Linda Bloom*
Jan. 23, 2007
|
The Rev. John and Pat
Schwiebert, of Metanoia
Peace Community United
Methodist Church, take a
break from loading boxes
of food into their van
in 2003. A UMNS file
photo by Tim Tanton. |
A
United Methodist clergyman in Oregon
and longtime “war tax” resister is
fighting an Internal Revenue Service
levy placed on his pension provided
by the denomination.
The
Rev. John Schwiebert, currently a
volunteer pastor of Metanoia Peace
Community United Methodist Church in
Portland, Ore., wants the United
Methodist Board of Pension and
Health Benefits to remove the levy.
He
and his wife, Pat, will appear at
the board’s Jan. 26 meeting in
Hollywood, Fla., to ask its
directors to consider an alternative
to complying with the IRS.
The
agency welcomes a presentation from
the Schwieberts during its public
forum, according to Colette Nies,
communications director for the
pension board. However, the board’s
position is that non-compliance with
the federal levy could jeopardize
the church’s other retirement plans.
“The
general board certainly sympathizes
with the Schwieberts and admires
their personal convictions, but we
also have an obligation to balance
our sympathies with our fiduciary
responsibility to over 44,000
pension plan participants,” Nies
said.
Schwiebert told United Methodist
News Service that he and his wife
have withheld the percentage of tax
money they believe is intended for
military purposes for about 30
years.
“It
was during Vietnam when we realized
that we were conscientious
objectors,” he said. Since he was
past the draft age at that point,
“our conclusion was that our
conscientious objection had to take
this form.”
Contending with IRS
At
times, the Schwieberts’ savings
accounts have been seized and
salaries garnished by the IRS. But
more often, the couple deliberately
has kept their income low enough to
avoid taxes altogether. When he
retired in 2001 and started drawing
a pension, their income increased.
For
more than 20 years, the Schwieberts
have lived “in community” with
others in the house that serves as
the base for the Metanoia Peace
Community congregation and its
ministries. His pension benefit is
deposited in a communal household
account, along with Pat Schwiebert’s
$400 monthly stipend as a full-time
employee of Grief Watch, a mission
of the congregation
|
The Rev. John and
Pat Schwiebert , currently a
volunteer pastor of Metanoia
Peace Community United
Methodist Church in
Portland, Ore. Courtesy of
the Rev. John Schwiebert. |
The
current IRS levy is for the $7,500
that the government says the couple
owes for 2002 and 2003. The
Schwieberts actually gave an
equivalent amount to the Board of
Commissioners of Multnomah County in
Oregon, although they understood the
gift was “an expression of
conscience,” not a legal
substitution for federal taxes.
“We’re willing to pay taxes; we’re
just distressed with the military
purposes for which the federal taxes
are being used,” he said.
The
couple did not file any tax returns
for 2004 and 2005. “We’ve sort of
taken the attitude that we feel like
we’re doing the right thing in not
paying.”
Last
December, Schwiebert received a
letter from the pension board
informing him of the levy, to begin
at the first of the year. The
involuntary deduction takes more
than half of the pension payment of
about $3,000 a month, he said.
Schwiebert believes there are
different legal interpretations over
whether the IRS can levy a pension.
He also would like to see the Board
of Pension and Health Benefits
recognize statements in the
denomination’s Social Principles
that “reject war as an instrument of
national foreign policy” and “assert
the duty of churches to support
those who suffer because of their
stands of conscience represented by
nonviolent beliefs or acts.”
“I
feel like there is room for
conscientious objectors to challenge
the system,” he said. “That’s what
we would like to see the board do.”
A
bishop’s support
The
Schwieberts have the support of
their former bishop, Bishop Calvin
McConnell, who presided over the
United Methodist Oregon-Idaho
Conference from 1980 to 1988 and
worked with the couple “in trying to
live their life of poverty in order
to not pay taxes to the United
States government for military
purposes.”
McConnell noted that the IRS “makes
exceptions” for Quakers and members
of other churches traditionally
considered to be “peace” churches.
“There’s no reason they cannot
extend the same courtesy to John and
Pat, who have been lifelong
pacifists,” he declared.
He
said the Board of Pension and Health
Benefits “needs to make allowances”
and ask the IRS to make an exception
for the Schwieberts.
*Bloom is a United Methodist News
Service news writer based in New
York.
News
media contact: Linda Bloom, New
York, (646) 369-3759 or
newsdesk@umcom.org. |
