Humorous Tax Quotes

Funny Quotations That Unravel the Mystery of Income Tax

Like it or not, you have to pay your taxes. The trouble is that understanding taxation requires more than a genius mind. Even Albert Einstein admitted, "The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax." So, if it's that time of year when you're drowning in reams of paperwork and trying to make sense of all the mumbo-jumbo, it's time to take a break. Read these funny tax quotes over a cup of coffee and share a laugh with someone who'll appreciate the humor. If the caffeine doesn't work, these tax quotes will surely perk you up.

Amusing Taxation Quotes Throughout History

Mark Twain
The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.

Will Rogers
It is a good thing that we do not get as much government as we pay for.

James Madison
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...

Will Rogers
Alexander Hamilton started the U.S. Treasury with nothing and that was the closest our country has ever been to being even.

Robert A. Heinlein
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.

Arthur Godfrey
I am proud to be paying taxes in the United States. The only thing is I could be just as proud for half of the money.

H. L. Mencken
Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.

Albert Einstein
[on filing for tax returns] This is too difficult for a mathematician. It takes a philosopher.

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

Herman Wouk
Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today.

Dr. Laurence J. Peter
America is a land of taxation that was founded to avoid taxation.

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

John Maynard Keynes
The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that carries any reward.

Winston Churchill
There is no such thing as a good tax.

Will Rogers
The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has.

Plato
When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.

Albert Einstein
The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.

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

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

Ronald Reagan
The taxpayer: that's someone who works for the federal government, but doesn't have to take a civil service examination.

Robert A. Heinlein
Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors... and miss.

Winston Churchill
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.

G. Gordon Liddy
A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money.

Barry Goldwater
The income tax created more criminals than any other single act of government.

Calvin Coolidge
Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery.

Dan Bennett
There's nothing wrong with the younger generation that becoming taxpayers won't cure.

Martin A. Sullivan
There may be liberty and justice for all, but there are tax breaks only for some.

Jewish Proverb
Taxes grow without rain.

Thomas Jefferson
The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects forbids it in the dispensation of the public monies.

Robert Dole
The principle involved here is time-honored and true: and that is it's your money.

Robert Dole
The purpose of a tax cut is to leave more money where it belongs: in the hands of the working men and working women who earned it in the first place. 

Rob Knauerhase
Isn't it appropriate that the month of the tax begins with April Fool's Day and ends with cries of 'May Day!'?

Roger Jones
I guess I think of lotteries as a tax on the mathematically challenged.

Jean-Baptiste Colbert
The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest amount of feathers with the least amount of hissing.

Benjamin Franklin, ​"Poor Richard's Almanac"​
It would be a hard government that should tax its people one-tenth part of their income.