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Who really said it

Don't Tax You. Don't Tax Me. Tax That Fellow Behind the Tree

Attributed to Russell B. Long 1918–2003 · United States Senator for Louisiana; chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, 1966–1981
Attributed In copyright

The three-part form is Long’s, and Quote Investigator says so: it “can properly be ascribed to Russell B. Long though it was a variant of pre-existing expressions.” The qualification matters. A rhyme ending “tax that fellow behind the tree” was already being printed anonymously in 1932, when Long was thirteen. What he added was the opening pair — don’t tax you, don’t tax me — and forty years of authority on the subject.

Last verified 3 Sep 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Unconfirmed quote & credit

“Don't Tax You. Don't Tax Me. Tax That Fellow Behind the Tree” Russell B. Long, US Senator for Louisiana — earliest printing Money magazine, July 1973. Adapted from an anonymous rhyme in print by 1932.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The estate of Russell B. Long; Time Inc. (Money, July 1973)). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the world of Russell B. Long — United States Senator for Louisiana, 1948–1987; chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, 1966–1981. Theme: "Don't Tax You. Don't Tax Me. Tax That Fellow Behind the Tree". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Don't Tax You. Don't Tax Me. Tax That Fellow Behind the Tree". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The source

Earliest source naming Long
Money, July 1973 — “Congress Tackles the Income Tax” by William B. Mead, p. 55
The older rhyme
Collier’s Weekly, 26 March 1932 — “Tax Everyone But Me” by William G. Shepherd, p. 12
Verified independently
The Literary Digest, 4 June 1932, as the epigraph to “The Locust Swarm of Lobbyists”
Form
Reported speech — no transcript or recording of Long delivering it has been produced

“Most people have the same philosophy about taxes,” says Senator Russell B. Long, who has heard all the variations during seven years as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which handles tax legislation. Long puts that universal theme to verse: Don’t tax you, Don’t tax me, Tax that fellow behind the tree.

From Money, July 1973, as quoted by Quote Investigator — the earliest source that attaches the verse to Long. Note the framing: the magazine says Long “puts that universal theme to verse,” which credits him with the wording while conceding the theme was already universal.

Scanned magazine issue, full text
The Literary Digest, 4 June 1932
Quote Investigator: the trail from 1932 to 1973

How we verified this

  • Quote Investigator ↗ concludes that verses about taxing someone “behind the tree” began appearing by the 1930s and were anonymous, that a version opening “Don’t tax you. Don’t tax me” was circulating by the 1970s, and that this version “can properly be ascribed to Russell B. Long though it was a variant of pre-existing expressions.”
  • We checked the ancestor rather than taking it on report. The 4 June 1932 issue of The Literary Digest is scanned in full at the Internet Archive ↗, and the couplet stands as the epigraph to “The Locust Swarm of Lobbyists”: “Congress, Congress, don’t tax me, / Tax that fellow behind the tree.” The article calls it “the song of the Washington lobbyists.” Quote Investigator gives the page as 8.
  • Quote Investigator dates the earliest instance to Collier’s Weekly of 26 March 1932 — “Congress! Congress! Don’t tax me, Tax that fellow behind the tree.” — and tracks it through Omaha and California newspapers that April, The Spectator in 1935 and the Boston Globe in 1955 and 1962, all before Long’s name is attached to it.
  • Wikipedia ↗ records the line among Long’s own remarks, framed as his definition of a phrase: tax reform “simply meant, ‘Don’t tax you, don’t tax me, tax that fellow behind the tree!’” It cites a biography of Long rather than a transcript.
In copyright

Neither the wording nor its ancestor reaches the United States public domain: the Long version was first printed in 1973 and the earliest known form of the rhyme in 1932, both after the 1931 line. We have classified it conservatively. In honesty, a two-line piece of doggerel adapted from an anonymous older rhyme may not attract copyright at all, and no one has ever asserted a claim over it.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

What people get wrong

Almost nobody disputes that Long said it, and they are right not to. What gets lost is that he was the last author of the joke, not the first.

“Tax that fellow behind the tree” Ancestor

The punchline is four decades older than Long’s version and was printed anonymously. The 4 June 1932 Literary Digest ↗ carries it as an epigraph, and Quote Investigator ↗ traces it to Collier’s Weekly that March. Long was born in 1918.

“Don’t tax you. Don’t tax me.” Later variant

The distinctive opening pair is what Quote Investigator credits to Long; the closing line he inherited. Removing the opening leaves the 1932 rhyme intact, which is a fair test of who wrote what.

A speech, hearing or transcript Absent

The earliest source is a magazine profile that reports Long putting the theme to verse rather than quoting him doing so, per Quote Investigator ↗. There is no Wikiquote page for Long, and no recording or floor transcript of the line has surfaced.

Long is the right man for the version you know, and the joke he was working from belongs to nobody.

Context

Why it mattered

Long ran the Senate Finance Committee for fifteen years, which made him the single person in Washington most often asked to define “tax reform”. The line is his answer, and it is a confession rather than a boast: every constituency wants the burden moved one seat over.

It survives because it is structurally honest about legislating. The committee that writes tax law is the committee everyone lobbies, and Long was candid about what that produced — he even claimed credit for inventing the “Christmas tree bill” ↗, the omnibus vehicle onto which unrelated favours get hung.

Everyone wants the burden moved one seat over.

Read the full story

The 1932 version was aimed at lobbyists, not voters. The Literary Digest printed it as “the song of the Washington lobbyists” above an article on the swarm of them then working the Capitol during the Depression-era revenue debates. Long’s revision widens the target from the lobby to the entire electorate, which is why his version outlived the original.

Long was the son of Huey Long, the Louisiana governor and senator assassinated in 1935, and he sat in the Senate from 1948 to 1987 — one of the longest tenures of the twentieth century. His reputation was for knowing the tax code better than anyone else in the room, which is part of why the joke landed: it reads as an insider admitting the game rather than an outsider mocking it.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Power Justice

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Investigator: Don't Tax You. Don't Tax Me. Tax That Fellow Behind the Treequoteinvestigator.com

The citation trail from Collier’s Weekly in 1932 through the 1973 Money profile that first attached the verse to Long.
The Literary Digest, 4 June 1932 (full scan)archive.org

Carries the anonymous 1932 couplet as the epigraph to “The Locust Swarm of Lobbyists” — the ancestor of Long’s version, readable in the original.
Russell B. Longen.wikipedia.org

Biography: Senate service 1948–1987, the Finance Committee chairmanship, and the line quoted as his definition of tax reform.
Christmas tree billen.wikipedia.org

The legislative practice Long claimed to have invented — useful context for how the Finance Committee worked under him.

The author

About Russell B. Long

Russell B. Long

1918–2003 · United States Senator for Louisiana, 1948–1987; chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, 1966–1981

Russell Billiu Long was the son of Huey Long, and he entered the Senate at thirty in 1948, a year after finishing law school. He stayed thirty-eight years. For fifteen of them he chaired the Senate Finance Committee, the panel that writes federal tax law, which made him one of the most consequential legislators of the postwar era and gave him an unrivalled view of how tax bills actually get made — the view this rhyme reports.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

The earliest source (Chicago)

Mead, William B. “Congress Tackles the Income Tax.” Money, July 1973, 55. Cited in “Quote Origin: Don’t Tax You. Don’t Tax Me. Tax That Fellow Behind the Tree,” Quote Investigator, 4 April 2014. For the older anonymous rhyme, see “The Locust Swarm of Lobbyists,” The Literary Digest, 4 June 1932.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Don't Tax You. Don't Tax Me. Tax That Fellow Behind the Tree’?” Last verified 3 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/dont-tax-you-dont-tax-me-tax-that-fellow-behind-the-tree/

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