The Great Oklahoma Tax Code Word Count

• Joe Wertz
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  Joe Wertz was a reporter and managing editor for StateImpact Oklahoma from 2011-2019. He reported on energy and environment issues for national NPR audiences and other national outlets. He previously worked as a managing editor, assistant editor and staff reporter at several major Oklahoma newspapers and studied journalism at the University of Central Oklahoma.

NPR STATEIMPACT

A word cloud of the 50 most-repeated words in the Oklahoma tax code. The bigger the word, the more it’s used.

Word count is a hot topic among Republican presidential candidates.

The federal tax code is too long, they agree, but just how long depends on who you ask — and when. Rick Perry said it was 3 million, while Herman Cain’s estimation has varied between 8 and 10 million words.

Data consultant Michael Bommarito and Michigan State Law Professor Daniel Katz say the Internal Revenue Code’s word count is more like 2.6 million.

Since there’s a simultaneous discussion about reforming the state tax code, we were curious: Just how many words are in Oklahoma’s tax code?

Title 68 of the Oklahoma Statutes covers state Revenue and Taxation.

In their analysis of the federal tax code, Bommarito and Katz made an effort to eliminate “nonsubstantive words” like is, and, or at. StateImpact Oklahoma followed suit, and also didn’t count the, or, is, which and a handful of abbreviated or repetitive words like Oklahoma, section, tax and pursuant.

Our non-scientific estimate: Oklahoma’s tax code contains about 450,000 words.

If, for some reason, you want to download the whole thing and check our math, right-click right here.