Quote Origin: The One Thing That Hurts More Than Having To Pay Income Tax Is Not Having To Pay Income Tax

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Thomas Robert Dewar? Anonymous?

Picture of a typewriter with a tax form from Unsplash

Question for Quote Investigator: A wit once said that he disliked paying income taxes, but the alternative of not paying income taxes was even worse. No payment implied no income, and that would be a terrible situation.

This quip has been attributed to Scottish whisky distiller Thomas Robert Dewar. Would you please help me to determine if this ascription is accurate by finding a citation?

Reply from Quote Investigator: In October 1927 Thomas Robert Dewar delivered a speech at the Poultry Club in London. The article about the event in the “Daily Mirror” newspaper of London used the subtitle “Lord Dewar’s Epigrams”. Here is a sampling of five remarks from Dewar’s address. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:1

Sometimes a pessimist is the man who backed an optimist.

The optimist is certain of going to Heaven; the pessimist is certain he won’t like it even if he gets there.

Experience is what you get while you are looking for something else.

The one thing that hurts more than having to pay income tax is not having to pay income tax.

When the time comes for the meek to inherit the earth, taxes will be so high that they won’t want it.

Articles about Dewar’s speech appeared on the same day in several newspapers including the “Daily Record”2 of Glasgow, Scotland and the “Newcastle Daily Journal”3 of Newcastle, England. These articles included the quip about taxes. Thus, there is solid evidence that Dewar spoke this joke in October 1927, but there is also evidence that the joke was already in circulation.

For example, in January 1927 “Smith’s Weekly” of Sydney, Australia printed a column called “The Melting Pot” which contained the following item without attribution. The phrasing was slightly different because it used the word “paying”:4

If there’s one thing that hurts more than paying income tax—it’s not having to pay income tax.

Another example of a saying that was in circulation before Dewar’s October 1927 speech is the following which appeared in the “Toledo Weekly Blade” of Toledo, Ohio in May 1923:5

Experience is what you get while you are looking for something else.

Hence, QI believes Dewar originated some epigrams, but he also repeated some existing epigrams.

Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.

In November 1927 “New York: A Four-Page Journal of Ideas for the General Reader” published the following item:6

LORD DEWAR, maker of fine whiskies: “The one thing that hurts more than having to pay income tax is not having to pay income tax.”

In March 1929 “The Co-operative Productive Review” of Leicester, England printed an instance with the word “paying’:7

The one thing that hurts more than paying income tax is not having to pay income tax.

In 1949 “The Dictionary of Humorous Quotations” compiled by Evan Esar included the following entry:8

DEWAR, Thomas Robert, 1864-1930, British distiller and raconteur.

The one thing that hurts more than paying an income tax is not having to pay an income tax.

In 2000 “The Times Book of Quotations” contained the following entry:9

Dewar, Lord Thomas Robert (1864-1930)
Scottish Conservative politician and writer

The only thing that hurts more than paying an income tax is not having to pay an income tax. Attr

In conclusion, Thomas Robert Dewar did use this quip during a speech in London in October 1927, but the joke remark was already circulating in January 1927. Hence, QI believes Dewar helped to popularize this quip, but he probably did not originate it. The creator remains anonymous.

Image Notes: Picture of a typewriter with a tax form from Markus Winkler at Unsplash. The image has been cropped and resized.

Acknowledgement: Great thanks to the anonymous person whose inquiry led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration.

  1. 1927 October 19, Daily Mirror, Peer’s Problem: Lord Dewar’s Epigrams, Quote Page 22, Column 3, London, England. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
  2. 1927 October 19, Daily Record, ‘Lays’ of the Hen: Lord Dewar’s Rhyme About Eggs: More Epigrams, Quote Page 2, Column 5, Glasgow, Strathclyde, Scotland. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
  3. 1927 October 19, Newcastle Daily Journal, LORD DEWAR’S LATEST: More Sparkling Epigrams at Jubilee Dinner, Quote Page 11, Column 5, Newcastle, Northumberland, England. (British Newspaper Archive) ↩︎
  4. 1927 January 15, Smith’s Weekly, The Melting Pot, Quote Page 23, Column 4, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
  5. 1923 May 10, Toledo Weekly Blade, (Filler item), Quote Page 4, Column 1, Toledo, Ohio. (GenealogyBank) ↩︎
  6. 1927 November 12, New York: A Four-Page Journal of Ideas for the General Reader, Volume 1, Number 46, Raisons, Quote Page 4, Column 3, Published by New York University, New York. (Google Books Full View) link ↩︎
  7. 1929 March, The Co-operative Productive Review, Volume 4, Number 7, Of the World To-day, Quote Page 188, Official Organ of by the Co-operative Productive Societies. Leicester, England. (Google Books Full View) link ↩︎
  8. 1949 Copyright, The Dictionary of Humorous Quotations, Edited by Evan Esar, Section: Thomas Robert Dewar, Quote Page 64, Bramhall House, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
  9. 2000, The Times Book of Quotations, Section: taxes, Quote Page 688, HarperCollins, Glasgow, United Kingdom. (Verified on with hardcopy) ↩︎