Death, taxes and a few good one-liners -

After days of nonstop coverage of Donald Trump’s tax practices, including some from me, we can all use a good tax laugh.

And now, just in time, I can offer it to you, courtesy of tax lawyer Jeff Yablon, who’s posted a list of funny tax quotes on Tax Notes.

Yablon, a partner at the Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman law firm, has appeared in my column before, thanks to his book "As Certain as Death: Quotations About Taxes," which is episodically published by Tax Notes and just keeps growing, not unlike the tax code.

“I am a tax lawyer who has always loved and collected quotes, especially those that are cynically funny,” Yablon said. He added, “Nothing lends itself to cynical humor more than politicians, elections and taxes.” Indeed.

You can read all 127 of the quotes in his new collection. And all that fun is free.

I liked lots of those quotes. And now, I’ll show you the ones I like most, some of which I’ve shortened. (As editors know, less is often more). I’m limiting myself to one quote per person — otherwise, I might have had to give Dave Barry a co-byline.

So here we go, from the beginning of our Republic:

“Alexander Hamilton started the U.S. Treasury with nothing, and that was the closest our country has ever been to breaking even.”

— Will Rogers

The most imaginative quote:

“I bet that if you actually read the entire vastness of the U.S. Tax Code you’d find at least one sex scene (‘Yes, yes, YES! Moaned Vanessa as Lance, his taut money moist with moisture, again and again depreciated her adjusted gross rate of annualized fiscal debenture’).”

— Dave Barry

And another semi-libidinous one:

“You know we all hate paying taxes, but the truth of the matter is without our tax money, many politicians wouldn’t be able to afford prostitutes.”

— Jimmy Kimmel

A few partisan quotes:

“Have a surplus? Try a tax cut. Deficit too high? Try another. Feel a cold coming on? Take two tax cuts, roll back some regulations, and call us in the morning.”

— President Obama

“Democrats object to cutting the U.S. 35 percent corporate tax rate ... on grounds that it favors the rich and powerful. But Democrats will carve out tax loopholes for business they like and that write them campaign checks.”

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— Wall Street Journal editorial page

A few nonpartisan ones:

“Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.”

— H.L. Mencken

“When [politicians] start naming tax laws after themselves, we are definitely not on the road to simplicity. It crosses some kind of line.”

— Christopher Bergin, publisher of Tax Notes

“I’ve always been impressed by the attention paid to the dead. The Democrats made sure they get to vote. The Republicans give them a tax cut.”

— Bob Somerby, blogger and comedian

“Whenever politicians talk about streamlining or harmonizing taxes, clutch your wallets and pocketbooks — it’s going to cost you money.”

— Steve Forbes

“When Congress talks about simplification, taxpayers may well be reminded of Emerson’s comments regarding an acquaintance: ‘The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.’”

— Michael Graetz, Columbia Law School professor

“A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

And two more. One is from someone who has made billions for his shareholders by deftly playing the tax code without boasting but graciously seems to have allowed billions of dollars of his personal charitable tax deductions to expire unused. The second is from his polar opposite.

Here’s the first:

“If I get a break, someone else pays. Government can’t deliver a free lunch to the country as a whole. It can, however, determine who pays for lunch.”

— Warren Buffett

And the last one, from someone who lost billions for his investors and lenders but somehow seems to have gotten big tax breaks for himself:

“I think nobody knows more about taxes than I do, maybe in the history of the world. Nobody knows more about taxes.”

Who’s that? Need you ask? You already know the answer, don’t you? It’s Donald Trump.

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