Timmersomethings Trivia Blog: A taxing process

TODAY'S MYSTERY QUOTE

QUOTE: "We have long had death and taxes as the two standards of inevitability. But there are those who believe that death is the preferable of the two. 'At least," as one man said, "there's one advantage about death; it doesn't get worse every time Congress meets.'"

HINT: (1904-1994), appellate attorney who argued more cases before the U.S. Supreme Court than any other lawyer in the twentieth century.

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RANDOM TIDBITS

For most of our history, we didn't have an income tax. The Supreme Court said that the tax was unconstitutional. When the income tax amendment was passed in 1913, its supporters claimed that only the rich would pay the tax.

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During the first World War, tax rates were pushed up to 77 percent. They stayed there until the late 1920s. The same thing happened after World War II. Wartime tax rates were as high as 94 percent, and incredibly the top rate stayed above 90 percent for 20 years after the war.

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Presidents Kennedy and Reagan gave us significant tax relief. But after reaching a post-war low of 28 percent, the top tax rate, thanks to Bush and Clinton, is now back to 40 percent. Today's bottom tax rate -- 15 percent -- is more than double the rate paid by the rich in 1913.

Today, the median income family -- mom, dad, two children -- pays more than $5,000 in income taxes, or more than 14 percent of its income. When you include Social Security, Medicare, sales and other taxes, about 40 cents of every dollar goes to the government.

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When the income tax first took effect it had 170 pages of laws and regulations. Today, the tax code has 17,000 pages, along with hundreds of thousands of pages of court decisions. The 1986 tax act was aimed at simplification. It ended up amending 2,000 sections of the code and creating more than 100 new forms.

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The IRS has 114,000 employees. That's equal to the population of Peoria, Illinois. It is twice as big as the CIA and five times the size of the FBI. IRS employment has increased 20 percent over the past 10 years. The rest of the government shrank by 10 percent over that same period.

(Material from Ed Rubenstein, the economic consultant for National Review since 1988.)

QUOTE: "We have long had death and taxes as the two standards of inevitability. But there are those who believe that death is the preferable of the two. 'At least," as one man said, "there's one advantage about death; it doesn't get worse every time Congress meets.'"

ANSWER: Erwin N. Griswold.