Oprah Winfrey, in a 2011 interview with Piers Morgan, expressed her disdain for writing checks for more than $100,000 to the Internal Revenue Service.
In the interview, Morgan asked Winfrey about her billion-dollar business and inquired about how many checks she signs.
"I sign all the ones for over $100,000 and that’s a lot of checks," Winfrey said. "Millions are going out."
Morgan asked whether or not that hurt Winfrey and whether she felt physical pain from it.
"No the most pain I feel is—my accountants will tell you this—every time I write a check to the IRS, it's a ceremony," Winfrey said. "They come in, for years they came in with wine, now they come in with tequila—it's a tequila signing ceremony."
According to Americans for Tax Reform, Winfrey has also criticized the Death Tax in the past.
"I think it's so irritating that once I die, 55 percent of my money goes to the United States government," Winfrey said. "You know why it's so irritating? Because you already paid nearly 50 percent when the money was earned."
Morgan also asked Winfrey how to get the economy going again and how to get America back on its feet since she has been such a successful business woman.
"It's a billion-dollar business right?" Morgan asked. "As an empire it's very impressive and it's successful. How do we get this going again? How do we get America back on its feet?"
At the time of the interview in 2011, the economy had just been through a recession and was going through one of the worst economic recoveries since World War II.
"I don't know the answer to that, that's out of my lane, you've now just driven off the road," Winfrey responded.
"What I can talk about is my compassion for anybody who is struggling, who has lost their job, who is out of work, doesn't know how they're going to pay this month's bills, living paycheck to paycheck," she said. "I have great empathy for that and understand what that means."