quotations about taxes
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
Our tax law is a 1,598-page hydra-headed monster and I'm going to attack and attack and attack until I have ironed out every fault in it.
VIVIEN KELLEMS
Los Angeles Times, January 26, 1975
If you master your destiny, you will find out there is a destiny tax.
JOSEPH BONKOWSKI
Quote Me
Taxes are collected by governments in order to finance their expenditures and also for purposes of stabilization, distribution and allocation. Particular taxes may cause changes in people's behaviour and have an impact on aggregate demand that, therefore, influences the level of economic activity. Taxes are the instruments through which governments redistribute income and wealth and, moreover, they are an integral part of a government's fiscal policy as they are used to stabilize aggregate demand.
NIKOLAOS KARAGIANNIS
Modern State Intervention
An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy.
DANIEL WEBSTER
McCulloch v. Maryland, 1819
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
The Largest business in the world is collecting U.S. tax dollars.
JOSEPH BONKOWSKI
Quote Me
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
The wages of sin are death, but by the time taxes are taken out, it's just sort of a tired feeling.
PAULA POUNDSTONE
stand-up routine
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
Recognizing that all taxes have negative effects, a "good" tax is broad-based--it affects everybody. It has a low rate and does not have loopholes. When a tax is broad-based and has a low rate, everyone pays something but no one pays too much.
KATHLEEN VINEHOUT
"Is there a 'good' tax?", Jackson County Chronicle, May 31, 2017
Death and taxes and childbirth! There's never any convenient time for any of them!
MARGARET MITCHELL
Gone With the Wind
Printing money is merely taxation in another form. Rather than robbing citizens of their money, government robs their money of its purchasing power.
PETER SCHIFF
"Peering into the Abyss", March 29, 2009
We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.
LEONA HELMSLEY
attributed, New York Times, July 12, 1989
I have only one thing to say to the tax increasers: Go ahead, make my day.
RONALD REAGAN
speech, March 13, 1985
Taxes are like the wheat poured into the public hopper; rent, in whatever form, may be described as the flour that comes from the public mill. The privileged man, who is allowed to carry off the grist, eats his bread, as it were, at the taxpayer's expense.
CHARLES BOWDOIN FILLEBROWN
The ABC of Taxation
Many people believe that where taxes are concerned, they are victims, held hostage by an inevitable process that allows them no input, no control. This passive approach becomes something of a self-fulfilling prophecy; where people believe that they lack control, they seldom try to assert control.
RICHARD CARLSON
The Don't Sweat Guide to Taxes
Taxes are like hot potatoes that get passed around. The poor man who does not pay for water at home may pay for it when he buys coffee downtown, where tax-paying businesses pass the cost on to consumers.
K. FILIP PALDA
Home on the Urban Range
People who avoid taxes, like corporations that move to Bermuda or look for big tax cuts, are not paying their dues to their country. You use our banking system, our Treasury, our roads, our schools to train your workers, our sewers, our governmental protections, our court systems. It is patriotic to be a taxpayer. It is traitorous to desert your country and not pay your dues, putting the burden on people with less means to support your business. Do your duty to the country. Pay your fair share of taxes.
PAMELA BOYD
"Taxes are like US membership fees", Missoulian, May 31, 2017
The Founding Fathers realized that "the power to tax is the power to destroy," which is why they did not give the Federal government the power to impose an income tax. Needless to say, the Founders would be horrified to know that Americans today give more than a third of their income to the Federal government.
RON PAUL
speech, April 30, 2009