Page 35 - Lawyer Humor PUB_Neat

The average length of a sentence in the Internal

Revenue Code is 100 words.

— One sentence contains 379 words.

— And another has 385 words.

— The longest sentence contains 506 words before

you reach the first period.

Someone has said,

“The Code should be held unconstitutional

simply because it is so incomprehensible.”

--

Of course, as you might expect, it was lawyers who

wrote most of the Code. Lawyers don’t have to be

verbose in order to confuse people.

But verbosity sure does help.

I love quoting the following section of the Infernal

Revenue Code:

“For the purposes of Paragraph 3, an

organization described in Paragraph 2

shall be deemed to be an organization

described in Section 501(c), 4, 5 or 6,

which would be described in Paragraph 2

if it were an organization described

in 501(c)(3).”

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