Income Tax
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50 free Income Tax trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Income tax feels like a permanent fact of life, yet in most countries it is a fairly recent invention, usually brought in as an emergency measure and then never quite repealed. Its history is full of reluctant politicians, courtroom battles and people who tried almost anything to shrink the bill. This quiz covers how the American federal system came about and how it works now: the paperwork, the vocabulary on a pay stub and the rules that decide who owes what. It also looks abroad, at how other nations tax what people earn, and at the gangsters, film stars, musicians and cartoon characters who have crossed paths with the taxman. It suits students in a civics or personal finance class, hosts planning a round for filing season, and anyone who would rather answer questions about tax than fill in a return. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Disney character starred in The New Spirit, a 1942 cartoon urging Americans to pay their income tax?
Donald Duck
Donald Duck starred in the short, which Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. commissioned from Walt Disney to back the war effort. It earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary.
Q 02Which conflict prompted the first US federal income tax, a flat 3 percent levy on incomes above $800?
American Civil War
The American Civil War left Washington short of money, so Abraham Lincoln signed the tax in August 1861. A year later Congress swapped the flat rate for a graduated scale.
Q 03Which gangster's 1931 income tax conviction followed a 1927 ruling that illegally earned money can be taxed?
Al Capone
Al Capone drew eleven years in federal prison. Prosecutor Mabel Walker Willebrandt had first tried her theory on a South Carolina bootlegger, who argued that declaring criminal income would incriminate him.
Q 04Richard Hatch went to prison for failing to report the $1 million he won on which reality show's debut season?
Survivor
Survivor crowned Richard Hatch its first winner in 2000, and a jury convicted him on tax charges in 2006. He served fifty-one months, then nine more for failing to amend his returns.
Q 05Which board game long made players landing on Income Tax choose between paying $200 or ten percent of their holdings?
Monopoly
Monopoly dropped the choice in 2008, when the US edition moved to a flat $200. Under the old rule players had to decide before they were allowed to add up what they owned.
Q 06Which tax preparation company, founded in Kansas City in 1955, changed the spelling of its founders' surname?
H&R Block
H&R Block was started by brothers Henry and Richard Bloch, who ended the name with a K so that nobody would say blotch. Their first newspaper ad offered tax help for $5.
Q 07Which state scrapped its individual income tax and pays residents a yearly dividend drawn from oil revenues instead?
Alaska
Alaska dropped the tax at the start of the 1980s. Its Permanent Fund Dividend goes to people who have lived there for a full calendar year, and the payment itself is subject to federal income tax.
Q 08Seven million of which people vanished from US tax returns once a 1986 law required a Social Security number for each?
Dependents
Dependents fell by seven million in the first year, because many of the children being claimed had never existed. Others had been claimed by parents who did not have custody.
Q 09Which Swedish children's author wrote a 1976 newspaper satire after her marginal tax rate reached 102 percent?
Astrid Lindgren
Astrid Lindgren answered with a fairy tale, Pomperipossa in Monismania, printed in the paper Expressen. The row was one of several blamed when the Social Democrats lost power that year after 44 years.
Q 10A 2016 law spared most American winners of which prizes from federal income tax on their value and bonus money?
Olympic medals
Olympic medals and the cash bonuses that come with them stopped counting as income for winners earning under $1 million a year. Paralympic medals are covered as well.
Q 11Which amendment, ratified in 1913, reversed an 1895 Supreme Court ruling so Congress could tax incomes directly?
Sixteenth
The Sixteenth Amendment went to the states in July 1909 and took until February 1913 to win enough of them. It was proposed partly to defuse calls for new taxes in a tariff bill.
Q 12Which president signed the 1913 law that brought back the federal income tax, set at 1 percent on income above $3,000?
Wilson
Woodrow Wilson signed the act that October, and its income tax touched only about three percent of the population. The same law sharply cut tariffs, his first priority on taking office.
Q 13Which number was given to the main US individual income tax return in 1913 simply because it came next in the sequence?
1040
Q 21Which sultan's name was attached to an 1188 English levy of a tenth of revenues, raised to fund a crusade against him?
Saladin
Saladin had captured Jerusalem in October 1187, and the tithe named for him became the largest tax England had ever collected. Anyone who joined the crusade was let off paying.
Q 22Britain's tax year begins on 6 April because Lady Day, its old start, moved when the country adopted which calendar?
Gregorian
Gregorian dates ran eleven days ahead of the old ones in 1752, so the quarter day of 25 March became 5 April. The tax year ends on that date, and the next one opens the morning after.
Q 23Canada's federal income tax was brought in by Finance Minister Thomas White to cover the costs of which conflict?
First World War
1040 was just the next free number on the government's list of forms, and the first version ran to three pages. Around 350,000 were filed in 1914, and every one was audited.
Q 14Which form does a new US employee hand the employer to set paycheck withholding, one the IRS rarely ever sees?
W-4
W-4 forms stay in the employer's files and decide how much is held back. A one-off bonus can lead to too much being withheld, because the sum may be treated as if it were earned every payday.
Q 15Which large state's constitution bans an income tax, with a two-thirds vote of its legislature needed to repeal the ban?
Texas
Texas is among a handful of states that leave individual incomes untaxed. It does collect from companies through a franchise tax.
Q 16Which Midwestern state passed the first modern state income tax in 1911, two years before the federal one returned?
Wisconsin
Wisconsin began collecting in 1912, and the money it raised prompted other states to copy the idea. Hawaii had taxed incomes even earlier, as a territory, from 1901.
Q 17Some tax protesters call the income tax amendment void, claiming which state was not formally admitted until 1953?
Ohio
Ohio joined the Union in 1803, but Congress passed no official proclamation of that date until 1953. Courts have rejected the argument every time it has been raised.
Q 18Which president paid about $465,000 in back taxes in 1974 after scrutiny of his personal finances?
Nixon
Richard Nixon had repeatedly said he would pay anything he owed, and the bill came while the wider scandal over his conduct in office kept growing.
Q 19Which songwriter wrote the wartime tune I Paid My Income Tax Today and signed its royalties over to the US Treasury?
Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin gave the Treasury a second song as well, Any Bonds Today?, written after Secretary Henry Morgenthau asked for a tune that would sell war bonds.
Q 20Which retirement account, named after a Delaware senator in 1997, is funded with money that has already been taxed?
Roth IRA
Roth IRA savers get no tax break on the way in, but the growth and qualified withdrawals come out tax-free. The idea was first floated in 1989 under the name IRA Plus.
First World War spending left Ottawa with debts so large that it could not give the revenue up when peace came. Until then it had lived mainly on tariffs and customs duties.
Q 24Which country got its first income tax in 1860 from the founder of The Economist, sent there after a mutiny?
India
India's tax followed the rebellion of 1857, which had left the British administration in an acute financial crisis. The same Scottish businessman also presented the first Indian budget.
Q 25Which former Soviet republic adopted a flat income tax in 1994, charging 26 percent whatever a person earned?
Estonia
Estonia was an early adopter of the idea. Russia followed in 2001 and saw real revenue from personal income tax rise by about a quarter in the first year.
Q 26Which East African country joins the United States in taxing citizens who live abroad, charging them a flat 2 percent?
Eritrea
Eritrea asks its people overseas for 2 percent of their foreign income, while the United States applies its full rates. In the vast majority of countries citizenship makes no difference to tax.
Q 27Members of churches in which country pay an extra 8 or 9 percent on their income tax, collected by the state?
Germany
Germany's church tax, the Kirchensteuer, supplies about 70 percent of church revenue. The lower rate applies only in Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg.
Q 28Which Swedish film director went into self-imposed exile in Munich after his 1976 arrest on income tax charges?
Ingmar Bergman
Ingmar Bergman was arrested in the middle of a theatre rehearsal. A prosecutor dropped the charges within two months, saying the alleged crime had no legal basis, but the director kept his base in Munich until 1984.
Q 29Which British prime minister brought income tax back in 1842, despite opposing it at the election a year earlier?
Robert Peel
Robert Peel had campaigned against the tax in 1841, but a growing budget deficit forced his hand. Britain had already abolished it twice, the second time a year after Waterloo.
Q 30Which British band's 1966 chart-topper Sunny Afternoon is narrated by an aristocrat bemoaning what high taxes cost him?
The Kinks
The Kinks reached number one in Britain with it in July 1966. Ray Davies wrote the song at home while ill, and made its narrator a scoundrel so that listeners would not feel sorry for him.