John Chenoweth: “it is not often that I bring a whole lot of levity to this House, but sometimes we have to make sure we maintain our…”

“it is not often that I bring a whole lot of levity to this House, but sometimes we have to make sure we maintain our sense of humor in order to make sure we maintain our focus. Madam Speaker, this is Halloween and there will be many scary stories that are told today. One of the scariest stories that I heard that I remember when I was a child was the tale of the headless horseman. But in keeping with that theme today, let me tell you a true story. I call it the tale of the brainless taxman. As I said, this is really a true story and it involves one of my constituents. My constituent, a respected Idaho jurist named Robert Huntley, carefully paid his taxes every year and when I said he is a respected Idaho jurist, he is a former justice of the Idaho Supreme Court. He is a careful man. He is a law-abiding man. He thought that he was safe, by paying his estimated taxes as required, from the clutches of the brainless taxman. But last year he made a mistake. The good judge underpaid his taxes by 39 cents. Out of nearly $75,000, the good judge underpaid his taxes by 39 cents. Now, that is an error of about one two-hundred thousandths of the tax burden. It is also less than one-half dollar. It seems to me that it could have been rounded down to a zero, but that would have been reasonable. And the IRS is not reasonable and we all know that from the horror stories that we have heard across this Nation.”