Tax day quotes, cartoons, and links, and the 1967 cartoon version of The Beatles "Taxman"

The first modern income tax was levied in Britain between 1799 and 1816 to fund the Napoleonic wars, but it did not become permanent until 1874. Similarly the United States adopted a like measure during the Civil War, but it was not institutionalized until the ratification of the 16th amendment to the Constitution in 1913. Related: tax protester Sixteenth Amendment arguments.

When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.

~ Frédéric Bastiat (wiki)

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

~ George Bernard Shaw

There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.

~ James Madison

The point to remember is that what the government gives it must first take away.

~ John S. Coleman

Here's the 1967 cartoon version of The Beatles "Taxman": lyrics below the video. George Harrison (who wrote the song) explains why (more here):

“I had discovered I was paying a huge amount of money to the taxman,” he once explained in interview.  “You are so happy that you’ve finally started earning money – and then you find out about tax.  In those days we paid nineteen shillings and sixpence out of every pound (there were twenty shillings in the pound), and with supertax and surtax and tax-tax it was ridiculous – a heavy penalty to pay for making money…It was, and still is, typical.  Why should this be so?  Are we being punished for something we have forgotten to do?...That was the big turn-off for Britain.  Anybody who ever made any money moved to America or somewhere else.”

Let me tell you how it will be:

There's one for you, nineteen for me,

'Cause I'm the taxman, yeah, I'm the taxman.

Should five percent appear too small,

Be thankful I don't take it all

'Cause I'm the taxman, yeah, I'm the taxman.

If you drive a car, I'll tax the street,

If you try to sit, I'll tax your seat.

If you get too cold, I'll tax the heat,

If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet.

Don't ask me what I want it for,

If you don't want to pay some more,

'Cause I'm the taxman, yeah, I'm the taxman.

Now my advice for you who die:

Declare the pennies on your eyes,

'Cause I'm the taxman, yeah, I'm the taxman,

And you're working for no one but me.

~ The Beatles (George Harrison) ("The Taxman")

And from 1943, here's Donald Duck telling you to pay your taxes:

Congress can raise taxes because it can persuade a sizable fraction of the populace that somebody else will pay.

~ Milton Friedman (wiki)

To force a man to pay for the violation of his own liberty is indeed an addition of insult to injury.

~ Benjamin Tucker

The difference between death and taxes is death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets.

~ Will Rogers (wiki)

We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.

~ Winston Churchill

Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery.

~ Calvin Coolidge

It would be a hard government that should tax its people one-tenth part of their income.

~ Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanac

What at first was plunder assumed the softer name of revenue.

~ Thomas Paine

What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin. 

~ Mark Twain 

To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men. 

~ Edmund Burke 

Civil servants and priests, soldiers and ballet dancers, schoolmasters and police constables, Greek museums and Gothic steeples, civil list and services list - the common seed within which all these fabulous beings slumber in embryo is taxation. 

~ Karl Marx

The Long Sordid Tale of the American Income Tax.

Tax Revolts from Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Dave Barry's classic 1996 column on preparing your own taxes: Pray For an Asteroid.

How the Tax Code Manipulates Us.

Excellent analysis: Tax implications of the zombie apocalypse.

Death and Taxes... and Zombies: Tax implications of the zombie apocalypse

Assuming that you survive the zombie apocalypse, here's something else to consider.

Adam Chodorow, a professor at Arizona State University's Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, authored the paper "Death and Taxes...and Zombies". Here's the abstract: 

The U.S. stands on the precipice of a financial disaster, and Congress has done nothing but bicker. Of course, I refer to the coming day when the undead walk the earth, feasting on the living. A zombie apocalypse will create an urgent need for significant government revenues to protect the living, while at the same time rendering a large portion of the taxpaying public dead or undead. The government’s failure to anticipate or plan for this eventuality could cripple its ability to respond effectively, putting us all at risk. 

This article fills a glaring gap in the academic literature by examining how the estate and income tax laws apply to the undead. Beginning with the critical question of whether the undead should be considered dead for estate tax purposes, the article continues on to address income tax issues the undead are likely to face. In addition to zombies, the article also considers how estate and income tax laws should apply to vampires and ghosts. Given the difficulties identified herein of applying existing tax law to the undead, new legislation may be warranted. However, any new legislation is certain to raise its own set of problems. The point here is not to identify the appropriate approach. Rather, it is to goad Congress and the IRS into action before it is too late.

After laying out the differences between different zombie types — notably the difference between zombies under the power of others and self-motivating zombies — Chodorow examines the various tax implications of zombification. He goes through the various reasons why a zombie may or may not be considered the same person it was prior to death, noting that a person's transformation into a raving cannibal with no heartbeat might not be enough to consider them legally deceased:

...[I]t seems a stretch to conclude that those who transform seamlessly into zombies should be considered dead. They never lose heart or brain function, though they now function quite differently from before. While it might be tempting to declare them dead, significant line-drawing problems would arise as one tried to distinguish between zombies and those who have suffered some mental or physical breakdown. Put differently, were such zombies to be considered dead because they suffered a personality change, physical disability, or decreased brain function, the door would be open to declaring dead a wide range of people currently considered to be alive.

For instance, someone who suffers a stroke and loses the ability to speak, walks with a shuffle, and undergoes a significant personality change is clearly alive under any existing state standard. Similarly, someone with Alzheimer's or in a vegetative state, whose brain stem alone survives, is considered alive. It would be inconsistent to classify those people as alive, while at the same time classifying those infected by a zombie virus as dead. One difference may be that those afflicted by strokes would likely not develop an overpowering hunger for brains. However, developing a taste for brains cannot be the determinant of whether someone is dead or considered a zombie. The members of numerous aboriginal tribes and Hannibal Lecter practiced cannibalism and would not qualify as either dead or zombies.

He also tackles other tricky aspects of zombification: whether a person is still considered married if their spouse has become undead, the administrative problems of resurrecting dead social security numbers, and the difficulty many zombies would likely have in filling out income tax forms.

Read the whole thing.  Here's an example of a footnote:

Count Chocula has clearly made a killing on his cereal, and rumor has it that even the Count Who Counts is loaded. While harnessed to the greater good of teaching children to count, it turns out that the Count's OCD-like fascination with numbers turns out to be typical of vampires. See BARBER, supra note 76, at 49 (describing a tradition where people placed bags of grain near a suspected vampire's grave on the theory that the vampire would be compelled to count all the grains, thus occupying the vampire through the night and precluding other, less socially beneficial activities). Batman is also well off, owning a mansion, the bat cave, and all the great toys at his disposal. However, all evidence suggests that he is not a vampire, just some guy who likes to dress up in tights and pretend to be bat-like.

More here and here, via io9.

Wednesday links

Tax day quotes, cartoons, history and links, including the 1967 cartoon version of The Beatles "Taxman"

A Look Back at Franklin, America's Lost State.

How computational power—or its absence—shaped World War naval battles.

Abraham Lincoln was shot on April 14, 1865 and died the morning of the 15th - here's history, contemporaneous articles and illustrations, and an eyewitness report from 1956.

Stopping the spread of disease during and after the American Revolution - fumigating people with smoke was thought to neutralize smallpox: “a judicious and proper application of fire and smoke is the true means appropriated for the destruction and utter extinction of the most malignant sources of disease.”

A History of Pizza - Samuel Morse, inventor of the telegraph, described pizza in 1831 - "it altogether looks like a piece of bread that has been taken reeking out of the sewer’.

And in the animals are just like humans category, Elephants Console One Another By Genital Touching and Sympathetic Noises.

Monday links

“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” 

~ Frédéric Bastiat (wiki)

Tax day quotes, cartoons, links, Dave Barry, and the 1967 cartoon version of The Beatles "Taxman".

A Brief History of the Beer Can.

Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865 - quotes, a brief synopsis of events, and a televised eyewitness report from 1956. Also, For Sale: The Telegram That Announced Abraham Lincoln’s Death.

News you can use: How to Dismantle a Nuclear Missile.

For Leonardo da Vinci’s birthday, check out his handwritten resume from 1482. 

The Titanic sunk on April 14, 1912 - here's an eyewitness account. Related: Titanic Food Menus For 1st, 2nd and 3rd Class Passengers.

ICYMI, most recent links are here, and include the science of dog farts, the Florida town where people cut off their appendages for insurance money, photos of Italy in the mid-1800s, and that Time the US military made flying saucers.

Friday links

Tax day quotes, cartoons, and links, Dave Barry, and the 1967 cartoon version of The Beatles "Taxman"

How to file an online extension.

Tax Revolts from Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Death and Taxes... and Zombies: Tax implications of the zombie apocalypse.

The Long Sordid Tale of the American Income Tax.

Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865 (includes an eyewitness report from 1956).

The Titanic sunk on April 14, 1912 - here's an eyewitness account. Related: Titanic Food Menus For 1st, 2nd and 3rd Class Passengers.

ICYMI, Monday's links are here, and include the science of dog farts, a history of the joke "Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?", the physics behind a baseball bat’s sweet spot, and a useful infographic: The Flowchart of Medieval Penitent Sexual Decision-Making.

Thursday links

It's St. Bartholomew's Day - some history (including the massacre), a brief documentary, and Monty Python.

Women's fashion in every year from 1784-1970.

The Amazing Sutherland Sisters And Their 37 Feet Of Hair.

August 24 is the anniversary of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and destruction of Pompeii in A.D. 79.

Movie Roles That Were Only Ever Offered To One Actor.

The Stanford Professor Who Fought the Tax Lobby.

ICYMI. Wednesday's links are here, and include some of the dumbest inventions of the 20th Century, Gene Kelly's birthday, NASA's plan to save the earth from a supervolcano, and a 1957 film on how grocery stores work.

Thursday links

Tax day: quotes, songs, links, advice, filing an extension, Dave Barry, and the 1967 cartoon version of The Beatles "Taxman".

Tax Revolts from Science Fiction and Fantasy.

The Long Sordid Tale of the American Income Tax.

Death and Taxes... and Zombies: Tax implications of the zombie apocalypse.

TaxProf's IRS scandal archives - he's posted every day since May 10, 2013 when the IRS admitted that they were targeting conservative groups.

A Short History of Congress’s Power to Tax and eleven shelters, dodges, and rolls - all perfectly legal - used by America's wealthiest people.

ICYMI, Wednesday's links are here, and include dog fart science, why the date of Easter moves around, the physics of shoelace knot failure, the guy who had to chat with the king while he used the toilet, and the beginning of the Civil War.

Friday links

Tax day quotes, songs, links and advice, filing an extension, Dave Barry, and the 1967 cartoon version of The Beatles "Taxman".

Tax Revolts from Science Fiction and Fantasy.

A Short History of Congress’s Power to Tax and eleven shelters, dodges, and rolls - all perfectly legal - used by America's wealthiest people.

It's Leonardo da Vinci’s birthday - here's his handwritten resume from 1482.

Terrible Beauty Ingredients Throughout History.

What's Inside a Yo-Yo That Keeps It Spinning?

ICYMI, Thursday's links are here, and include the Kansas farm that's the default location for 600 million IP addresses, science behind why you shouldn’t pop your pimples, lots of information about Abraham Lincoln's assassination on April 13, 1865, and an eyewitness account of the sinking of the Titanic.

Friday links

Death and Taxes... and Zombies: a well thought out treatise on the tax implications of the zombie apocalypse.

The Stunningly Intricate Curta Mechanical Calculator, a look Inside The Brains Of Vintage Calculators and (with some overlap) a gallery of the Strangest And Most Beautiful Calculators Ever Created.

That Time the British Developed a Chicken Heated Nuclear Bomb. 

UPS Trucks Don't Turn Left, Saving Them 10 Million Gallons of Gas/Year.

Giant Flesh-Eating Koala of Legend Was Real.

Here's the Soviet Union's Secret Space Cannon.

ICYMI, Tuesday's links are here, and include a 1938 film demonstrating how dramatic sound effects were made for old-time radio shows, tales of real-life castaways, why we have toes, and a supercut of the 100 best one-liners just before the kill.

Monday links

Video: BBC's documentary "Bat-Crocodile War", if the bats had bombs and the crocs had light sabers. 

The surprisingly interesting history of Pyrex.

As a recruiting tool, the U.S. Navy built a battleship in New York City's Union Square. It was there from 1917-1920.

Watch a video of a 57-story modular skyscraper go up in 19 days.

The chicken tax: why there are so few (relatively speaking) imported trucks in the U.S.

Top 10 Terrifying Prehistoric Sea Monsters.

ICYMI, Friday's links are here, and include a newly found photo of Vincent Van Gogh from 1887, a re-creation of how the Romans lifted wild animals into the Colosseum, and using lasers to burn away mental illness.

Wednesday links

Tax day quotes, songs, links and advice, filing an extension, and the 1967 cartoon version of the Beatles' Taxman. Related: Death and Taxes... and Zombies: Tax implications of the zombie apocalypse.

The Titanic sunk on this day in 1912 - here's an eyewitness account.

A Short History of Congress’s Power to Tax.

It's Leonardo da Vinci’s birthday. Here's his handwritten resume from 1482.

A Photographic Exploration Of The Oldest Living Things In The World.

If I dug straight down, at a speed of 1 foot per second, what would kill me first?

ICYMI, Tuesday's links are here, and include the 150th anniversary of Lincoln's assassination, romance novel covers re-enacted by real people, a KKK application from the 1920's (you had to be recommended by a friend first, though), and the status of woolly mammoth cloning efforts.

Map of state purchasing power: you can buy 40% more in Mississippi than in DC with same $$

Tax Institute:

Regional price differences are strikingly large, and have serious policy implications. The same amount of dollars are worth almost 40 percent more in Mississippi than in DC, and the differences become even larger if metro area prices are considered instead of statewide averages.

This tax map shows the real value of $100 in each state. Because average prices for similar goods are much higher in California or New York than in Mississippi or South Dakota, the same amount of dollars will buy you comparatively less in the high-price states, or comparatively more in low-price states. Using data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, here's the adjusted value of $100, reflecting how prices are different in each state.

For example, Tennessee is a low-price state, where $100 will buy what would cost $110.25 in another state that is closer to the national average. You can think of this as meaning that Tennesseans are about ten percent richer than their nominal incomes suggest.

Adjusting for prices reveals average real incomes in Kansas to be higher than in New York, despite New York having much higher incomes as measured in dollars.

Read the whole thing.

Friday links

Tomorrow is the 2,494th anniversary of the battle of Thermopylae.

How to Tell Whether You've Got Angst, Ennui, or Weltschmerz.

An interesting look at taxes and loopholes: How The Burrito Became A Sandwich.

Interesting vintage video describing how simple machines become more complex: How manual transmission works.

Some science for Guardian of the Galaxy fans: What Real-Life Plants Could Groot Have Evolved From?

The Strange Real-Life Origins of the Fiendish Werewolf.

ICYMI, Thursday's links are here, and include the Science of Star Wars, an (ok for work) instructional video from 1997 on How to Have Cybersex on the Internet, land ownership - How Far Above and Below Do You Own, and 33 Onion Stories That People Fell For.

Tuesday links

The McDonalds Monopoly Fraud: from 1995 to 2001, there was only one real winner - Uncle Jerry.

Tax day quotes, songs, links and advice, Dave Barry on preparing your own taxes, how to file an online extension, and the 1967 cartoon version of The Beatles "Taxman".

Dissecting the Timeline of Paul Revere’s Ride.

Remember these excellent Easter cards from The Onion?

If the speed limit were really “enforced by radar” like the signs say, the strength of the necessary signal “would also destroy the offender, car, police officer, road, and all other traffic for miles around”.

Gallery: The 30 Happiest Animals In The World.

ICYMI, Friday's links are here, including early bands of (later) rock stars, handheld jet engines, and the tax implications of the zombie apocalypse.

Tax Day is Coming: Game of Thrones Edition

Maybe NSFW - one instance of the "F" word right at the end. To miss it, stop the video at 2:38. Via Reason - All Men Must Pay:

Trying to write off that red wedding this year? As tax day approaches April 15, 2014, nobody's more upset about paying their debts than those playing the Game of Thrones. One thing is for sure: All men must pay. For more on taxes, check out these articles at Reason.com.