Taxation Quotes

The biggest review of taxation ever undertaken in this country, is now dead in the water.

Taxation is nothing but organized robbery, and there the subject should be dropped.

We are looking for a Wealth Tax that will bring in sufficient revenue to justify having a wealth tax.

No taxes can be devised which are not more or less inconvenient and unpleasant.

What I agree with is that we need a significantly changed taxation system. And the one that I've advocated is based on tithing, because I think God is a pretty fair guy.

All we have to do now is to inform the public that the payment of social security taxes is voluntary and watch the mass exodus.

The subjects of every state ought to contribute toward the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state ....As Henry Home (Lord Kames) has written, a goal of taxation should be to 'remedy inequality of riches as much as possible, by relieving the poor and burdening the rich.'

I have only one thing to say to the tax increasers: Go ahead, make my day.

Every dollar released from taxation that is spared or invested will help create a new job and a new salary.

The government is currently experiencing withdrawal symptoms, and we musn't feed the habit by injecting more tax dollars into it.

I think that the spirit of America is still very much one of where people want to work hard and the majority of people want to work hard. They want to be entrepreneurs. But when you have that all taken away with government regulation or with government overbearance of taxation, you start to wonder whether if it's even worthwhile because who are you really working for? Are you working for yourself, are you working for the government? In the end, this wealth distribution scheme that's at the heart of the current political administration is an inherently wrong one.

Taxation has its limitations as a method of achieving better economic distribution since for this purpose it is essentially remedial. We must also take a positive approach by finding new ways to spread ownership of future capital growth more broadly in our society.

Most politicians are ever eager to regulate industrial and commercial activity and strike at the economic elite with confiscatory taxation. Unfortunately, regulation and taxation tend to hamper economic activity, inhibit productivity, and depress levels of living.

Taxation, gentlemen, is very much like dairy farming. The task is to extract the maximum amount of milk with the minimum amount of moo.

The crime of taxation is not in the taking it, it's in the way that it's spent.

My plan has all that. It's energy independence. It will help our economy. It's a significant tax cut for corporations, including automatic expensing. It's bringing all those profits home from Europe without any taxation. It's lowering our corporate - or our personal rate to 28 percent, the same rate that Ronald Reagan had.

My expertise was in public finance, particularly corporate taxation, since I had worked at the US Treasury.

I've been told that some members of Congress disagree with my tax cut proposal. Well, you know it's been said that taxation is the art of plucking feathers without killing the bird. It's time they realized the bird just doesn't have any feathers left.

Congress can raise taxes because it can persuade a sizable fraction of the populace that somebody else will pay

Country is run by... financial powers & corporate interests [who] send their lawyers to Congress to make laws so that they don't have to pay taxes

The United States has a system of taxation by confession

A general principle of good taxation is that similar jobs, and similar kinds of compensation, should be taxed the same way: otherwise, the government is effectively subsidizing some jobs over others.

Strictly speaking, it probably is not “necessary” for the federal government to tax anyone directly; it could simply print the money it needs. However, that would be too bold a stroke, for it would then be obvious to all what kind of counterfeiting operation the government is running. The present system combining taxation and inflation is akin to watering the milk; too much water and the people catch on.

The taxpayer - that's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take the civil service examination.

If the money is raised by taxation, then the burden will fall where it ought to fall, . . . and the rich and stingy will no longer be able to evade the duties of citizenship and of humanity.

I am favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible.

The separation of Church and State in everything relating to taxation should be absolute.

Have we the courage and the will to face up to the immorality and discrimination of the progressive tax, and demand a return to traditional proportionate taxation? ... Today in our country the tax collector's share is 37 cents of every dollar earned. Freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp.

Highly graduate taxation realizes most completely the supreme danger of democracy, creating a state of things in which one class imposes on another burdens which it is not asked to share, and impels the State into vast schemes of extravagance, under the belief that the whole costs will be thrown upon others.

We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.

Undoubtedly Internet has reduced the possibilities of taxation. Why should I buy something here if I can buy it from a company in Japan or England or Brazil with a lower tax?

If all those magnificent cathedrals with their valuable lands in Boston, Philadelphia and New York were taxed as they should be, the taxes of women who hold property would be proportionately lightened....I cannot see any good reason why wealthy churches and a certain amount of property of the clergy should be exempt from taxation, while every poor widow in the land, struggling to feed, clothe, and educate a family of children, must be taxed on the narrow lot and humble home.

Inflation is not a benign element in the economy's operation. It is, as it has always been, the most dangerous and destructive form of taxation.

A [tax loophole is] something that benefits the other guy. If it benefits you, it is tax reform.

The institution of taxation is not a civilized but a barbaric method to fund anything, because it amounts to nothing less than outright extortion, a gross violation of human liberty.

Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.

Contrary to any claim of a systematically “neutral” effect of taxation on production, the consequence of any such shortening of roundabout methods of production is a lower output produced. The price that invariably must be paid for taxation, and for every increase in taxation, is a coercively lowered productivity that in turn reduces the standard of living in terms of valuable assets provided for future consumption. Every act of taxation necessarily exerts a push away from more highly capitalized, more productive production processes in the direction of a hand-to-mouth-existence.

I believe that the levels of taxation advocated by liberals render those taxes a veiled form of theft. 'Give me more than half of your honestly earned money or you will be arrested' is legalized thievery.

A government is a compulsory territorial monopolist of ultimate decision-making (jurisdiction) and, implied in this, a compulsory territorial monopolist of taxation. That is, a government is the ultimate arbiter, for the inhabitants of a given territory, regarding what is just and what is not, and it can determine unilaterally, i.e., without requiring the consent of those seeking justice or arbitration, the price that justice-seekers must pay to the government for providing this service.

No matter what anyone may say about making the rich and the corporations pay the taxes, in the end they come out of the people who toil. It is your fellow workers who are ordered to work for the Government, every time an appropriation bill is passed. The people pay the expense of government, often many times over, in the increased cost of living. I want taxes to be less, that the people may have more.

The tax upon land values is the most just and equal of all taxes. It falls only upon those who receive from society a peculiar and valuable benefit, and upon them in proportion to the benefit they receive.It is the taking by the community for the use of the community of that value which is the creation of the community. It is the application of the common property to common uses. When all rent is taken by taxation for the needs of the community, then will the equality ordained by nature be attained.

The greed and envy of the nonproducer is insatiable, so that eventually nothing short of 100% taxation will appease him.

If this taxation exemptions for Church were rescinded, our property taxes would be substantially lowered, and those who rent houses and apartments would consequently be able to pass along this savings in the form of lowered rents. It could have a profoundly salubrious effect on the entire economy.

It is not possible to starve an organised terrorist group because it is number one a state, so it levies taxation inside the territory that is controlled by Islamic State. But also the activity, for example the smuggling of oil, is taking place in an area which is a war zone. So of course people will buy that oil because they don't have any alternative. So even if we wanted to stop that kind of trade, it will be very, very difficult to do that.

Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors... and miss.

Lower rates of taxation will stimulate economic activity and so raise the levels of personal and corporate income as to yield within a few years an increased - not a reduced - flow of revenues to the federal government.

Is there a point of taxation wherein even a Democrat would acknowledge it is thievery by the government?

My family achieved success not in spite of, but because of the American system of taxation. After all, without reliable and safe roads there’d have been no Disneyland; without high functioning legal systems and a well regulated business environment there would have been no copyright protection for Mickey Mouse.

So far as the object of taxation is to raise a revenue for discharging the debts and defraying the expenses of the community, its operation should be adapted as much as possible to suit the burden with equal hand upon all in proportion with their ability of bearing it without oppression.

When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that the old source is abandoned. It merely means that the politicians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had one before.