This series will run in April to add a little Humor to your busy Tax Season.

♦  Anyone who thinks the government is listening to their phone calls should try calling IRS for tax help!

♦  California levied the first jock tax in 1991, on athletes from Chicago, right after the Chicago Bulls beat the L.A. Lakers. (Chicago quickly responded in kind.) Today, most states with a professional sports team impose a jock tax. Jeanne Sahadi and Les Christie, CNN/Money 2-22-05

♦  An investor went to a tax expert and said: “If I give you $1,000, will you answer two questions?”  The tax expert replied: “Certainly. And what is the other question?”

♦  Ode To Prosperity  By Madeleine Begun Kane

The affluent prosper quite well,

As their savings continue to swell.

It is great to be rich.

Destitution’s a bitch.

You might say that it’s taxing as hell.

This series will run in April to add a little Humor to your busy Tax Season.

♦  This year, there are some major changes that you, as a taxpayer, should be aware of, unless—to quote Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Charles Rossotti, in his annual Message To Taxpayers—“you wish to become roommates with a federal-prison inmate who weighs 400 pounds and likes to dress you up as Tinkerbell.”  Dave Barry 4-10-2002

♦  A man, called to an IRS audit, asked his accountant for advice on what to wear. “Wear your shabbiest clothing. Let him think you are a pauper.”

Then he asked his lawyer the same question, but got the opposite advice. “Do not let them intimidate you. Wear your most elegant suit and tie.

Confused, the man went to his rabbi, told him of the conflicting advice, and requested some resolution of the dilemma.

“Let me tell you a story,” replied the rabbi. “A woman, about to be married, asked her mother what to wear on her wedding night. ‘Wear a heavy, long, flannel nightgown   that goes right up to your neck.’ But when she asked her best friend, she got conflicting advice: ‘Wear your most sexy negligee, with a V neck right down to your navel.

The man protested, “What does all this have to do with my problem with the IRS?”

“No matter what you wear, you are going to get screwed.”

♦  The fourth of July, 1776 – that’s when we declared our freedom from unfair British taxation. Then, in 1777, we started our own system of unfair taxation.

♦  When I was young I used to think that money was the most important thing in life. Now that I am old, I know it is. – Oscar Wilde

♦  A window sign in Chicago: “Tax Returns Prepared – Honest Mistakes Are Our Specialty.”

This series will run in April to add a little Humor to your busy Tax Season.

♦  In the current political climate, taxes have been so demonized that many citizens regard taxation itself as wrongful. And if people believe that taxation itself is wrongful, then it would seem to follow that such people would also believe that the failure to pay taxes is not wrongful… Stuart P. Green, CNBC Blog, 4-11-11

♦  Attention, millionaires, the watchful eye of the Internal Revenue Service is trained on you. During last year’s tax season, 30 percent of multimillionaires were audited, the agency said. Overall, just 1.1 percent of individual income tax returns were checked. Tiffany Hsu – Los Angeles Times 3-23-12

♦  Doing your own income tax return is a lot like a do it yourself mugging.

♦  A Florida tax attorney recently died and his brother, a physician, gave the eulogy. He stated that it had been said that nothing was certain but death and taxes, but his brother had successfully beaten taxes on many occasions but he still could not beat death. Told to me by Martin Press, tax controversy lawyer. 2-27-13

♦  Ambition in America is still rewarded . . . with high taxes.

This series will run in April to add a little Humor to your busy Tax Season.

♦  Isn’t it appropriate that the month when the taxes are due begins with April Fool’s Day and ends with cries of “May Day!”?

♦  Of course you can’t take it with you, and with high taxes, lawyer’s fees, and funeral expenses you can’t leave it behind either.

♦  One tax resolution firm says in an ad that the IRS “is the most brutal collection agency on the planet.” Good, it should be. Ken Herman, Statesman.com, April 14, 2012

♦  On lawyers: “Ignorance of the law is no excuse not to practice. ” — Conrad Teitell

♦  Q: How do you humble a person that flaunts their wealth?

A: Have them fill out a tax return.

♦ A tough old cowboy from south Texas counseled his grandson that if he wanted to live a long life, the secret was to sprinkle a pinch of gunpowder on his oatmeal every morning.

The grandson followed this advice religiously until the day he died at age 103.

He left behind 14 children, 30 grandchildren, 45 great-grandchildren, 24 great-great-grandchildren, and a 15-foot hole where the crematorium used to be. Courtesy of Michael Lied

♦  “The tax code, once you get to know it, embodies all the essence of [human] life: greed, politics, power, goodness, charity”.  David Wallace via NY Times Courtesy of Jessica Tovrov

♦  Loud dramatic music like you’d hear on TV or at the movies — “DUN-DUN-DUN” — echoes in my head as I pull a letter from our mailbox; it’s from the Internal Revenue Service. I don’t know about you but when Uncle Sam’s money collectors drop a line in the middle of summer instead of around tax time I open the thing right up.  I mean, I don’t mind paying taxes. The USA is a big ol’ country and my hard-earned money helps with such groovy things as superhighways, thermonuclear devices to protect us from rogue nations and anti-revolution insurance. But I know I paid my taxes that year. Uncle Sam’s records said I’d only paid a few hundred dollars but my records showed that I’d paid a few thousand. Somewhere along the way someone, and it wasn’t me, left off a digit. Grant McGee 8-13-10

♦  “A tax shelter is a dumb transaction done by smart people that will put my kids through college.” Chuck Rettig, tax controversy lawyer, at a 2005 tax conference.

♦  America is the land of opportunity. Everybody can become a taxpayer.

♦  IRS MOTTO: “We’re not happy until you’re not happy!”

♦  Q: How many IRS agents does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: Only one, but the light bulb really gets screwed.

From Garrison Keillor’s ‘Pretty Good Joke Book’.  Sent to me by R. Scott Shifley.

♦  “Ignore them and they’ll go away” is great advice for some of life’s annoyances. Unfortunately, it doesn’t apply to taxes. Martha C. White, Time.com  April 17, 2012.

♦  Cutting its (IRS) budget is like killing the goose that lays golden eggs — or at least putting her in a smaller pen and feeding her less.  By Selena Maranjian, The Motley Fool  2-1-12

♦  A white business envelope with your name in the cellophane window and the return address of the IRS. Attention from the Internal Revenue Service can mean only one thing: They want your money. Jessica Steinberg, The Times of Israel, 5-6-12

♦  Over the years and out of literally thousands of tax protestors who have been criminally prosecuted, a very small handful have won acquittals in their criminal trials, by convincing the jury that they were too stupid to understand that they had to pay taxes. Financial & Tax Fraud Education Associates, Inc.

♦  Here’s a funny story relayed by Internal Revenue Service call center agents: Taxpayers sometimes call in to complain they have mistakenly received letters intended for someone named “Levy.” Gadi Dechter, Government Executive, May 16, 2011.