quotations about taxes
I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible.
MILTON FRIEDMAN
attributed, Democrats and Republicans: Rhetoric and Reality
No nation has ever taxed itself into prosperity.
RUSH LIMBAUGH
See, I Told You So
Just a reminder to every businessman in America. Taxation is paying your dues, paying your membership fee in America. If you join a country club or a community center, you pay fees. Why? You did not build the swimming pool, you have to maintain it. You did not build the basketball court. Someone has to clean it. You may not use the squash court, but you still have to pay your dues. Otherwise it won't be maintained and will fall apart, reducing the value of your membership.
PAMELA BOYD
"Taxes are like US membership fees", Missoulian, May 31, 2017
The most pernicious of all taxes are the arbitrary.
DAVID HUME
Essays
The evils of a bad tax are quite sure to be pressed upon the ears of Parliament in season and out of season; the few persons who have to pay it are thoroughly certain to make themselves heard.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
What at first was plunder assumed the softer name of revenue.
THOMAS PAINE
Rights of Man
Economists have a saying that "a good tax is an old tax" -- i.e. a tax the effects of which have been taken into account by all relevant economic actors.
MARTIN O'NEILL
"The cost of a windfall", New Statesman, August 18
When more of the people's sustenance is exacted through the form of taxation than is necessary to meet the just obligations of government and expenses of its economical administration, such exaction becomes ruthless extortion and a violation of the fundamental principles of free government.
GROVER CLEVELAND
attributed, Treasury of Presidential Quotations
Sending money to Washington to have it administered and sent back is like getting a blood transfusion from your right arm to your left arm with a leaky valve.
ERNEST HOLLINGS
attributed, Quotes Worth Repeating
Like everyone else, I want taxes lower. More money = more choices. BUT, I believe in taking responsibility for the circumstances we find ourselves in. As a citizen I voted for a bunch of the idiots in office. When they were doing stupid shit, I stood by quietly. Even when I spoke up, it didn't impact anything. So while I believe that lower taxes are good. I recognize that I was part of the problem. And given that we are in the middle of a big problem, what I believe is the optimal way doesn't matter. What matters now is fixing the problem. Unfortunately the way to fix the problem is to have those who can pay more to pay more. I've been proactive individually, I've written checks to the City of Dallas. I've written big checks for disasters where I know that anything not financed privately is going to come from taxpayers. So its my small way of trying to help. I think all these politicians who ignore the current context/realities of where we are, hurt more than help. If it were up to me, I would increase taxes and create metrics that triggered declines. If the unemployment rate falls to 6pct nationally and the Debt/GDP ratio declines to a specified amount, we lower taxes. If it goes the other way, we increase them further on the wealthy. I could go on for days on ideas, but no one is listening to me.
MARK CUBAN
"Mark Cuban's Novel Income Tax Proposal Is The Exact Opposite Of What Most Economists Would Endorse", Business Insider, December 24, 2012
The legal right of a taxpayer to decrease the amount of what otherwise would be his taxes, or altogether to avoid them, by means which the law permits, cannot be doubted.
GEORGE SUTHERLAND
Gregory v. Helvering, 1934
Tax reduction has an almost irresistible appeal to the politician, and it is no doubt also gratifying to the citizen. It means more dollars in his pocket, dollars that he can spend if inflation doesn't consume them first. But dollars in his pocket won't buy him clean streets or an adequate police force or good schools or clean air and water. Handing money back to the private sector in tax cuts and starving the public sector is a formula for producing richer and richer consumers in filthier and filthier communities. If we stick to that formula we shall end up in affluent misery.
JOHN WILLIAM GARDNER
The Recovery of Confidence
If you make any money, the government shoves you in the creek once a year with it in your pockets, and all that don't get wet you can keep.
WILL ROGERS
Will Rogers Speaks
As we've seen in other countries, the way to bring about fundamental change in a dysfunctional tax code is to start over -- to rewrite from scratch.
T. R. REID
"Why we need to rewrite our tax code from scratch", PBS, April 17, 2017
Above all things, a tax attorney must be an indefatigable skeptic; he must discount everything he hears and reads. The market place abounds with unsound avoidance schemes which will not stand the test of objective analysis and litigation. The escaped tax, a favorite topic of conversation at the best clubs and the must sumptuous pleasure resorts, expands with repetition into fantastic legends. But clients want opinions with happy endings, and he smiles best who smiles last. It is wiser to state misgivings at the beginning than to have to acknowledge them ungracefully at the end. The tax adviser has, therefore, to spend a large part of his time advising against schemes of this character. I sometimes think that the most important word in his vocabulary is "No".
RANDOLPH PAUL
The Lawyer as Tax Adviser
The American colonies, all know, were greatly opposed to taxation without representation. They were also, a less celebrated quality, equally opposed to taxation with representation.
JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH
The Age of Uncertainty
When a law becomes so impossible to understand that the ordinary citizen must look to the "super expert," the law becomes a trap and not a viable guideline. For years, the income tax and gift and estate tax laws have been modified and amended to the degree that only tax lawyers and accountants could really make any sense out of them. Now, with the advent of the Tax Reform Act of 1976 and all of its cross implications, not even the tax lawyers and accountants are so sure of themselves.
ROBERT S. TAFT
New York Law Journal, December 30, 1976
If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
I don't think meals have any business being deductible. I'm for separation of calories and corporations.
RALPH NADER
Wall Street Journal, July 15, 1985