COMT is thought by its proponents to be a logical extension to conscientious objection to military service.
In the more general category of hypothecation, there are already well-established precedents: they include the gasoline tax in the United States, which is dedicated to the funding of transportation infrastructure.
In the more specific category of military-related hypothecation, there was at least one legal, government-instituted historical precedent: An "alternative tax" related specifically to militia duty lasted for eight years in Upper Canada between 1841 and 1849, as we see in this quote:[3]In 1793 in Upper Canada, Governor John Graves Simcoe offered Mennonites, Quakers and Brethren in Christ an exemption from militia duty, to encourage their immigration to Canada.
In that respect it could be perceived as simply another form of quasi-alternative civilian service for conscientious objectors.
Nevertheless, this tax still stands as a precedent because an alteration was made to a taxation system (as opposed to simply requiring alternative civilian service).
In the 1960s, a Quaker group in the United States drafted a prototype law that would allow conscientious objectors to pay their taxes to UNICEF instead of to the U.S.
[5] As of 2021[update], the current proposal is called the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act.
It was a private member's bill proposed by NDP MP Alex Atamanenko and would put income tax paid by Canadians committed to COMT into a special account to be audited yearly by the Parliamentary Budget Officer and used exclusively for peace building purposes.
Another commonly raised objection is that COMT, if allowed, would establish a precedent for a general freedom for individual taxpayers to opt out of contributions for any tax-funded activity which they do not wish to support, including, for example, public education and healthcare.