Yoshi Committed Tax Fraud

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About

Yoshi Committed Tax Fraud refers to jokes that the Nintendo character Yoshi of the Super Mario series illegally evaded paying his taxes. The joke saw minor spread on social media before being popularized by several Siivagunner videos in April of 2018.

Origin

On May 28th, 2016, Tumblr user Druddigon^[1] responded to a post by user drn-000 stating Yoshi has never done anything wrong by saying "Yoshi has committed tax fraud." After drn-000 demanded proof, Druddigon posted a photoshopped image of Yoshi with a text bubble saying "I committed tax fraud." The post has gained over 120,000 notes (shown below).

Spread

The joke saw some light spread over the following two years. On June 10th, 2016, the image was submitted to ShitpostBot 5000. ^[2] On June 13th, 2017, Twitter user UnknownKongYT^[3] posted a photoshopped image of a game titled "Yoshi Commits Tax Fraud," gaining over 1,800 retweets and 4,000 likes (shown below, left). On June 30th, 2017, Twitter user @redpananda_^[10] created a screenshot of several Nintendo icons of Yoshi which spells out "I committed tax fraud." On September 29th of that year, Redditor SenorMeltMyFace reposted the image to /r/completeanarchy,^[4] gaining 176 points (shown below, right).

The joke saw a wider spread in April 2018 when popular Soundclown SiIvaGunner began uploading tracks referencing the joke to YouTube. On April 17th, the channel uploaded a 5-song playlist of tracks,^[5] each gaining tens of thousands of views (examples shown below).

In Nintendo Lore

On January 15th, 2019, Twitter account @SupperMarioBroth,^[6] an account dedicated to posting obscure trivia about the Super Mario series, posted that in the game for the Nintendo Wii, Yoshi is the only one of the 26 playable characters who asks to not be taxed when the player builds a a new tax office (shown below). The game came out in 2011, predating the meme by several years. The tweet gained over 14,000 retweets and 33,000 likes and gained over 6,500 points on Reddit.^[7] It was also covered in blogs like Nintendo Everything^[8] and Nintendo Soup.^[9]