The Tax Man Cometh

April 15th...the deadline for filing your federal income tax return. Here are what some people have had to say about taxes:

• The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the least possible amount of hissing. — Jean Baptiste Colbert
• In this world, nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes. — Benjamin Franklin
• The wisdom of man never yet contrived a system of taxation that operates with perfect equality. — Andrew Jackson
• The power to tax involves the power to destroy. — John Marshall
• Taxation without representation is tyranny. — James Otis
• Where there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same income. — Plato
• The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. — Will Rogers
• Taxes, after all, are dues that we pay for the privileges of membership in an organized society. — Franklin D. Roosevelt
• Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages. — H.L. Mencken
• Governments last as long as the undertaxed can defend themselves against the overtaxed. — Bernard Berenson
• There's nothing sinister in so arranging one's affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. — Judge Learned Hand
• The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still carries any reward. — John Maynard Keynes
• This message is on the business card of a Seattle accountant: "Let me prepare your tax return and save you time—maybe 20 years."