This was adapted from a stand-up comedy I performed a few years ago and found the notes to recently while going through all of my old junk. Without further ado:

Just the other day I was reading through a history book and found a rather silly idea. You see, it said this country had begun its revolution as a protest against high taxes! See? Told you it was utter nonsense. I had always understood that it was so we could be born free and then taxed to death. Boy, if Patrick Henry thought taxation without representation was bad, he should see how bad it is with representation!

This all became really confusing, you know, the mixed signals, so I did some research. One of the articles that was a great help had been written by Dave Barry. In it he says, “The IRS spends goodness knows how much of your tax money on these toll-free information hot lines staffed by IRS employees, who’s idea of a dynamite tax tip is that you should print neatly. If you ask them a real tax question, such as how you can cheat, they’re useless.”

It took a while, but with a lot more digging, I even found the IRS’s Taxpayer Complaint Hotline. Their top-secret number is 1-800-AUDIT-ME. If you decide not to call, but keep researching even beyond that, you may discover that there is another way to pay your taxes! A guy named Michael McShane said, “I owed the government $3,400 in taxes, so I sent them two hammers and a toilet seat.”

All of that research turned up other information too. Not that it will help you out, but it’s worth reading. Albert Einstein supposedly said that “the hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.” And Einstein said this? Ouch. But Will Rogers was there to clarify too, with how “the income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. Even when you make a tax form out on the level, you don’t know when it’s through if you are a crook or a martyr.” Thankfully a guy named William Buckley chimed in and said, “I would like to electrocute everyone who uses the word ‘fair’ in connection with the income tax policies.”

Speaking of being fair, do you know what the difference is between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist leaves the hide! But I can’t complain too much. After all, as H. L. Mencken said, “Unquestionably there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.” Besides! Taxes rank as excuse number 17 for “Why I won’t be Coming into Work Today.” All you have to do is tell your employer that you “refuse to commute to your job until there is a commuter tax. You insist on paying your fair share.”

And last, but certainly not least, there were a couple states who decided it wasn’t in their best interest to have a motto with “taxes” in it. But here are a couple that they considered:

Massachusetts – Our Taxes Are Lower than Sweden’s (For Most Tax Brackets) Missouri – Your Federal Flood Relief Tax Dollars at Work