Back to Africa Check

No, Bill Murray didn’t say eating 30% of kids’ ice cream would teach them about tax

A meme showing a crying child holding a partly eaten ice cream is spreading an anti-taxation message on Facebook. It includes a quote supposedly by US actor Bill Murray.

“The best way to teach your kids about taxes is by eating 30% of their ice cream - Bill Murray,” reads the text.

The best source we’ve found for the questionable quote is this tweet on @BillMurray, posted some five years ago on 23 March 2014. It’s been popular, with some 2,800 retweets and 2,000 likes.

But the account isn’t verified, and the owner explicitly says it’s not Murray’s.

“I AM NOT BILL MURRAY. This is a parody account. This account is not in any way affiliated with the actor Bill Murray,” their bio reads.



Bill Murray isn’t on Twitter


Fact-checking site Snopes reviewed the quote in February 2017 and found it to be false.

“We were unable to find any genuine comments made by the actor Bill Murray about his feelings on taxes. He also does not have an official Twitter account,” Snopes says.

Fact-checkers at Politifact also looked into the meme, when it was flagged by Facebook in January 2019, and rated it false.

“We couldn’t find credible evidence that the actor opined about the IRS [US Internal Revenue Service]. Murray himself is notoriously hard-to-reach,” Politifact say in their fact-check.

We at Africa Check have also been unsuccessful in our efforts to find any publicly available evidence to show that the quote is by Murray. - Africa Check (29/05/2019)

Republish our content for free

Please complete this form to receive the HTML sharing code.

For publishers: what to do if your post is rated false

A fact-checker has rated your Facebook or Instagram post as “false”, “altered”, “partly false” or “missing context”. This could have serious consequences. What do you do?

Click on our guide for the steps you should follow.

Publishers guide

Africa Check teams up with Facebook

Africa Check is a partner in Meta's third-party fact-checking programme to help stop the spread of false information on social media.

The content we rate as “false” will be downgraded on Facebook and Instagram. This means fewer people will see it.

You can also help identify false information on Facebook. This guide explains how.

Add new comment

Restricted HTML

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a href hreflang> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote cite> <code> <ul type> <ol start type> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <h2 id> <h3 id> <h4 id> <h5 id> <h6 id>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
limit: 600 characters

Want to keep reading our fact-checks?

We will never charge you for verified, reliable information. Help us keep it that way by supporting our work.

Become a newsletter subscriber

Support independent fact-checking in Africa.