“It’s income tax time again, Americans: time to gather up those receipts, get out those tax forms, sharpen up that pencil and stab yourself in the aorta.” – Dave Barry
“The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.” – Albert Einstein
“The government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.” – George Bernard Shaw
Tax Trivia:
– In 2003, Tax Freedom Day is on April 19
– The 16th amendment was never ratified by the states
– The original federal tax form was 4 pages long (including the instructions)
– In 1773 the Boston Tea Party was a revolt on a three-pence per pound tax on British tea (3% tax)
– The official manual of the Internal Revenue Service is over 38,000 pages
– The IRS employs 114,000 people; that’s twice as many as the CIA and five times more than the FBI
– Taxes eat up 38.2% of the average family’s income; that’s more than for food, clothing and shelter combined
– Sixty percent of the members of the Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee don’t do their own taxes
– Congress gets free tax preparation services. The rest of us pay $30 billion a year for professional tax help
– Corporations paid 11.2% of total fiscal 2000 taxes, or $236 billion. Individuals forked over $1.1 trillion in individual income taxes. All told, the IRS collected $2.1 trillion — including estate and gift taxes, excise taxes and various employment taxes.
– In 1999, the top 1% paid 27.1% of their adjusted gross income in taxes and 36.2% of all individual taxes
– The top 5% paid 23.6% of income and 55.5% of all individual taxes
– The top 25% paid 18.2% of income and 66.5% of all individual taxes
– The top 50%, 16% and 86.3% of all individual taxes
– In 2002 individuals, businesses and non-profits will spend an estimated 5.8 billion hours (more hours than all the people working in the Armed Forces) complying with the federal income tax code, with an estimated compliance cost of over $194 billion (more than it takes to produce every car, truck, and van in the US). This amounts to imposing a 20.4-cent tax compliance surcharge for every dollar the income tax system collects.
– The dollar sign $ is a modification of the figure 8 that used to be stamped on the old Spanish coins called pieces of eight
Sources:
TheLawThatNeverWas
Wink – Original tax form
Tax Form’s Home Page
Tax Freedom Day
Rubenstein
MoneyCentral
The Cost of Tax Compliance
Income Tax Burden
JustTax