The Tax Code is Bigger Than the Bible

But how big, these Republican Congressmen don't know. While doing some research on the U.S. Code, I encountered this post from Trygve's Digital Diary, which quotes from actual statements and press releases. So just how long is the Internal Revenue Code? Some of these crack me up:

U.S. Representative John Hostettler (R-IN): "the Internal Revenue Code and regulations add up to one million words and is nearly seven times the length of the Bible"

Which would make the Bible the size of one large novel.

U.S. Representative Rob Portman (R-OH): "The income tax code and its associated regulations contain almost 5.6 million words -- seven times as many words as theBible."

I don't know if he's right about the code, but he's got the Bible right.

U.S. Representative J.C. Watts, Jr. (R-OK) "At 3,458 pages, twice the length of the Bible ..."

This actually sounds reasonable.

U.S. Representative Spencer Bachus (R-AL): "With its 6,000 pages and 500 million words ..."

What is that, 83,000 words per page?


U.S. Representative Bill Archer (R-TX) "The Internal Revenue Code and regulations now come in at one million words and 9000 pages."

So that's just 111 words per page?


U.S. Representative Jim DeMint (R-SC): "44,000 pages, 5.5 million words, and 721 different forms ..."

That's five time bigger than what the previous guy said.

U.S. Representative Walter Jones (R-NC): "44,000 pages and growing"

Hey, now we're getting our story straight!

U.S. Representative Bobby Jindal (R-LA): "60,000 pages, longer than the Bible"

Yeah - fifty times longer.


U.S. Representative Dave Hobson (R-OH): "the current tax code, which at 1.3 million pages is twice the length of Tolstoy's War and Peace"

So War and Peace has 650,000 pages. This guy's an idiot.

U.S. Representative Nick Smith (R-MI): "the federal tax code has about four times as many words as the bible. Accompanying the law are a staggering two-and-a-half million pages of regulations"

Heaven help us if he's right about the regulations.

...and President George W. Bush: "it's a million pages long."

Apparently, it's so long, nobody really knows how long it is. Or go to the bottom of Trygve's post for the right answer.