Lawrence Zelenak (Duke) presented The Federal Income Tax in Popular Culture at Iowa on Friday as part of its Faculty Speaker Series:

Since the federal income tax became a mass tax during World War II, it has played a significant role in popular culture. For example, the income tax has featured prominently in nearly one hundred episodes of situation comedies (radio and television) from the 1940s to the present, and in over two hundred New Yorker cartoons (the bulk of which appeared during or after World War II, but the first of which appeared as early as 1929). These treataments of the income tax in popular culture are of interest for two reasons. First, they are of interest by reason of their very existence. There are virtually no sitcom episodes or New Yorker cartoons about taxes other than the federal income tax, despite the fact that in the United States other taxes combined (that is, federal, state, and local taxes of all types other than the federal income tax) produce more revenue than the federal income tax. The obvious explanation is that the character of the federal income tax — as a return-based mass tax — gives it prominence in the public consciousness out of proportion to its economic significance. Second, the popular culture treatments of the income tax are of interest for the insights they offer into public attitudes toward the tax system, and how those attitudes have changed over the postwar decades. In this decidedly nonexhaustive essay, I briefly describe some of the sitcom episodes and cartoons.