Karl Meyer

Who is Karl Meyer?

Karl Meyer is an American pacifist, activist, Catholic worker and tax resister. He is the son of William H. Meyer, a former member of the United States House of Representatives from Vermont. He is the founder of the Nashville Greenlands Catholic Worker community in Nashville, Tennessee. Meyer no longer considers himself a Catholic, but a Catholic worker. He is quoted as once "trying to be an American Gandhi".

In 1984, he defied the IRS's "frivolous filing" penalty by filing what the agency considered to be a "frivolous" return every day that year. He was assessed $140,000 in penalties, of which the IRS was only able to recover a little more than $1,000. He coined the name "cabbage patch resistance" for this technique, naming it after the then-popular Cabbage Patch Kids dolls, that, like his daily returns, were each a little different.