No one likes paying taxes. Here is a light hearted look at the IRS and tax collection.

“It was a terrible, terrible job: everybody I met was either afraid of me or hated me, and they took ****(profanity) out on me that had nothing to do with me, and I unwound to a horrible day’s work by listening to the Clash’s Clampdown and learning the true meaning of irony. My co-workers were whiny and humorless and unmotivated and their faces seemed drained of blood, and the atmosphere in the office was a lot like the film Office Space, with people going mental over copy machine malfunctions and feeling murderous about their bosses and more than a few employees looking like candidates for full-blown psychotic breaks.”
– Former IRS Revenue Officer Cornel Bonca
Quote appeared March 9, 2006 Writing in the Orange County Weekly

Electronic Filing: With every technological breakthrough, an old-fashioned tradition dies. In this case, we’re losing the tradition of burning the midnight oil: Sweating over a pencil and paper the night of April 15, trying to calculate those deductions, then spilling cold coffee all over the tax return and having to start all over. Whew, aren’t we glad those days are over? In this new, improved era, we can sweat over a computer keyboard and unfamiliar software program the night of April 15, then spill cold coffee into our computer, resulting in a shower of sparks and a small fire.
— Steve Brewer, Albuquerque Tribune Columnist, March 30, 2006

“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 IRS should protect Americans’ privacy, not let it be sold to the highest bidder,. The idea that the IRS could have thought this was not a significant change is simply unbelievable. It shows how distant a bureaucracy can be from people’s lives.” U.S. Rep. Nancy L. Johnson, commenting on the IRS proposal let tax preparers sell taxpayer person tax information to marketers and others.
– New Haven Register 03/27/06

Here’s my proposal, which is based on the TV show Survivor: We put the entire Congress on an island. All the food on this island is locked inside a vault, which can be opened only by an ordinary American taxpayer named Bob. Every day, the congresspersons are given a section of the Tax Code, which they must rewrite so that Bob can understand it. If he can, he lets them eat that day; if he can’t, he doesn’t. Or, he can give them food either way. It doesn’t matter. The main thing is, we never let them off the island.
— Dave Barry

The president named a Tax Advisory Panel. Its mission was to reform and simplify the tax code’s 60,400 pages. Close call, but the Panel solved the problem as usual — by adding pages.
— Jack Markowitz , TRIBUNE-REVIEW, March 27, 2006

Getting a letter from the Internal Revenue Service is often like your dentist saying that you’re facing expensive and painful dental work. It’s never welcome, but it shouldn’t always be a surprise.
— John F. Wasik, author of “The Merchant of Power,” 03/26/06