June 15, 1997

GENE WARNER
News Staff Reporter

Jacob Lapp, the 70-year-old patriarch of a large, activist Mennonite family, lives by moral principles he refuses to break -- or even bend.
He celebrated his 67th birthday in jail after declining, on principle, to be bailed out. He wound up spending eight months in jail for his actions in his family's harboring of a 15-year-old runaway boy.
In years past, Lapp mailed back his income-tax refunds, because he felt he hadn't earned the money. His family rejected agricultural subsidies, because the Lapps don't believe in government handouts. And he refuses to accept his monthly $ 565 Social Security check, because he doesn't believe in that system.
Principles, always the principles.
Lapp is in trouble again. And this time, he may lose his family's 375-acre farm in Chautauqua County.
The reason: He hasn't filed tax returns since 1990.
The Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. attorney's office in Buffalo have been trying to persuade Lapp to reconsider. But that's not going to happen, and he and his wife, Barbara, now face an order to appear in U.S. District Court on June 26.
Will Lapp be in court that day?
"Not by my own free will," he vowed.
As is his custom, Lapp is using his latest battle with the government to jump on his soap box and explain his heart-felt position about taxes. "I want to pay everything I owe, and that includes taxes," Lapp said last week inside his farmhouse. "But in the basic sense, I feel taxation is the downfall of civilizations.
"Taxation means coercive collection of taxes, and that is not good," he added. "I don't mind paying for what I use. I would be ashamed to use the roads without paying for them. But it's the coercive part I oppose."
This isn't a rationalization for not paying taxes. Although they can't
prove it, Lapp and his family estimate that, if they had complied with all IRS rules, the government might owe them money.
Two specific reasons triggered the family's decision in 1991 to stop filing tax returns.
Because their farm and produce stand are an informal cash business, with plenty of bartering, the Lapps didn't feel they could accurately fill out a required government form listing their precise earnings and paid salaries.
In 1990, they started calling that form "The Lie."
And on such forms, the family had to avoid any references to their underage child laborers.
That prompted a serious family discussion.
"We attributed our farm's success partly to our practice of honesty and fairness," the family says in a joint statement. "These tenets, as well as our faith in God, had made us a happy, peaceful family. During our discussion, we decided we would not give up our integrity for the sake of satisfying government requirements on hiring. We would also not give up our policy of hiring the young and the underprivileged."
That decision ultimately led them not to file tax returns.
"The questions of right and wrong were so powerfully clear for us that we just felt we had to take a stand," said one of Lapp's daughters, Susan.
What's next?
"We've had no contact or correspondence from them," Assistant U.S. Attorney Mary K. Roach said of the Lapps. She wouldn't comment on what could happen if the Lapps fail to appear in court, since that would be up to U.S.
District Judge William M. Skretny. The IRS refused to comment on any details of the Lapps' case.
But the Lapps know the possible consequences -- that the federal government could take their farm or send them to jail.
"If they take everything, they still can't take the peace in our heart, the knowledge that we are doing what's right," Jacob Lapp said. "They can take everything, but they can't take our integrity."
His whole life has been about standing up for his principles.
"I don't much care for anything else," he quipped.
He left the Amish church in 1961 after deciding that the Amish had put their own traditions above Biblical principles.
He refuses to collect Social Security, calling it an evil system.
"We don't think it's right that the government takes forcefully from
people, some of whom can't afford to pay, and gives it to others."
He refused to post $ 3,000 bail in 1993 after being jailed on rioting and resisting-arrest charges in connection with his family's harboring of the 15-year-old boy. Lapp thought it was wrong to be jailed without being indicted by a grand jury.
Since he questioned the court's jurisdiction in jailing him, he didn't
think it was right to post bail with that court.
As his legal battle with the IRS drags on, Lapp plans to take his "case" to the people in an informational meeting at 7 p.m. Friday in the Days Inn in Fredonia. He even invited the IRS and any federal officials involved in his case to attend.
"I think it's thrilling personally that this man is ready to sacrifice
everything he owns for what he believes in," said family friend and
supporter Frank Parlato Jr. "No matter what side of this you are on, you have to respect Jacob Lapp."