United Methodist pastor to appeal IRS levy on pension check

A UMNS Report By Linda Bloom*

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 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.