• There was a time when $1,000 was the down-payment on a car; now it’s the sales tax.• Congress does a few things right: it puts a high tax on liquor and then raises the other taxes that drive people to drink.• The attitude of Congress toward hidden taxes is not to do away with them, but to hide them better.• Congress has the unsolved problem of how to get the people to pay taxes they can’t afford for services they don’t need.• A fool and his money are soon parted. The rest of us wait until income tax time.• ...