US tax time: A later deadline and other tax facts

Thanks to a holiday in Washington, D.C., the federal tax-filing deadline this year is April 17, two days later than usual. The extra time provides an opportunity to peruse some random tax-related facts.

7. Quotable quotes about taxes

• “The nation should have a tax system that looks like someone designed it on purpose.”
– William Simon former US Treasury secretary

• “People who complain about taxes can be divided into two classes: men and women.” 
- Unknown

•  "Income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf."
Will Rogers, humorist

• "If we don't do something to simplify the tax system, we're going to end up with a national police force of internal revenue agents."
Leon Panetta, forrmer CIA director and current US Secretary of Defense

• "The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax."
Albert Einstein

• "I'm proud to pay taxes in the United States; the only thing is, I could be just as proud for half the money."
Arthur Godfrey, radio and television broadcaster and entertainer                                                                   

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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