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No, Bill Murray isn't serving up tax advice with that ice cream
Bill Murray has made cameos in a lot of unexpected places over the years. He tended bar in Austin, Texas, during the South by Southwest music festival in 2010. He crashed an engagement photo shoot in 2014. Now, he’s seemingly offering tax advice—at least according to an old viral image that’s appearing on Facebook again.
"The best way to teach your kids about taxes is by eating 30% of their ice cream," reads the text next to a picture of a young, blonde boy wailing. It’s attributed to Bill Murray, and in the corner is the logo for Turning Point USA, a conservative group that advocates for limited government and free markets.
But the quote has appeared elsewhere, on Pinterest, Goodreads and The Federalist Papers among other websites. Turning Point USA, responding to a message from PolitiFact seeking more information about the quote, noted that it is "all over the internet and has been for a long time" before directing us to CBS News’s website. There, the quote is featured in an undated photo slideshow called "Comedians’ best lines of financial wisdom."
Still, this photo was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) When the quote appeared on Reddit about a year ago, users were also suspicious.
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"Don’t think Bill Murray said this," one comment says. "It doesn’t even sound like a joke he would make," another user pointed out. Someone else tagged the post, simply: "Not Bill Murray."
We couldn’t find credible evidence that the actor opined about the IRS. Murray himself is notoriously hard-to-reach. But we did find the ice cream quote in one more place: on Twitter, where in March 2014 a Bill Murray parody account with the handle @billmurray tweeted it.
"I AM NOT BILL MURRAY," the account’s bio says. "This account is not in any way affiliated with the actor Bill Murray."
We rate this claim False.
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Our Sources
Facebook post, Jan. 8, 2019
Reddit post, visited Jan. 17, 2019
Tweet, March 23, 2014
CBS News, Comedians’ best lines of financial wisdom, visited Jan. 17, 2019
Email correspondence with Turning Point USA, Jan. 17, 2009
People.com, Bill Murray Explains Why He's Only Reachable Via a Mysterious 800 Number, April 12, 2018
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More by Ciara O'Rourke
No, Bill Murray isn't serving up tax advice with that ice cream
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