Quotes about Taxes
Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else. -- Frederic Bastiat
The difference between death and taxes is death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets. -- Will Rogers
The taxpayer; that's someone who works for the federal government, but doesn't have to take a civil service examination. -- Ronald Reagan
Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors... and miss. -- Robert A. Heinlein
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. -- Winston Churchill
A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. -- G. Gordon Liddy
The point to remember is that what the government gives it must first take away. -- John S. Coleman, address, Detroit Chamber of Commerce, 1956
The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin. -- Mark Twain
It is a good thing that we do not get as much government as we pay for. -- Will Rogers
The share-the-wealth movement appeals most to those with the least to share.
I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.... -- James Madison
I don't like the income tax. Every time we talk about these taxes we get around to the idea of 'from each according to his capacity and to each according to his needs'. That's socialism. It's written into the Communist Manifesto. Maybe we ought to see that every person who gets a tax return receives a copy of the Communist Manifesto with it so he can see what's happening to him.. -- T. Coleman Andrews, Commissioner of Internal Revenue, May 25, 1956 in U.S. News & World Report
Alexander Hamilton started the U.S. Treasury with nothing -- and that was the closest our country has ever been to being even. -- Will Rogers
To lay with one hand the power of government on the property of the citizen, and with the other to bestow it on favored individuals .... is none the less robbery because it is .... called taxation. -- US Supreme Court in Loan Association v. Topeka (1874)
There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I am proud to be paying taxes in the United States. The only thing is -- I could be just as proud for half of the money. -- Arthur Godfrey
Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages. -- H. L. Mencken
This [preparing my tax return] is too difficult for a mathematician. It takes a philosopher. -- Albert Einstein
Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today. -- Herman Wouk
America is a land of taxation that was founded to avoid taxation. -- Dr. Laurence J. Peter
Congress can raise taxes because it can persuade a sizable fraction of the populace that somebody else will pay. -- Milton Friedman
The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that carries any reward. -- John Maynard Keynes
There is no such thing as a good tax. -- Winston Churchill
The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. -- Will Rogers (1879 - 1935), Illiterate Digest (1924), "Helping the Girls with their Income Taxes"
A taxpayer need not arrange its affairs so as to maximize taxes as long as the transaction has a legitimate business purpose. -- Judge Cornelia G. Kennedy in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, April 20, 1992, aff. of the Tax Court holding in Proctor & Gamble v. Commissioner
When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income. -- Plato, The Republic
People who complain about taxes can be divided into two classes: men and women. -- Unknown
Most [tax revisions] didn't improve the system, they made it more like Washington itself: complicated, unfair, cluttered with gobbledygook and loopholes designed for those with the power and influence to hire high-priced legal and tax advisers. -- Ronald Reagan
The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax. -- Albert Einstein
To force a man to pay for the violation of his own liberty is indeed an addition of insult to injury. -- Benjamin Tucker in Instead of a Book
The income tax created more criminals than any other single act of government. -- Barry Goldwater
Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery. -- Calvin Coolidge
A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing something right. -- Unknown
The power of tax is not the power to destroy while this court sits... -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, United States Supreme Court Justice, in Panhandle Oil Co. v. Mississippi ex rel. Knox
There is nothing sinister in so arranging one's affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everybody does so, rich and poor; and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands. -- Justice Learned Hand
For an illustration of the difference between proportionate and progressive taxation, we can look to the Bible. There, tithing is explained as the economic basis of our Judaic-Christian religions. The Lord says you shall contribute one-tenth and He says, 'If I prosper you 10 times as much you will give 10 times as much.' That is proportionate -- but look what happens today when you start computing Caesar's share. A man of average income who suddenly prospered ten times as much would find his personal income tax increased 43 times. -- Ronald Reagan
Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed. -- Robert A. Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
It would be a hard government that should tax its people one-tenth part of their income. -- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanac, 1758
I like to pay taxes. It is purchasing civilization. -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, United States Supreme Court Justice
You can talk about "social justice" all you want. But what death taxes boil down to is letting politicians take money from widows and orphans to pay for goodies that they will hand out to others, in order to buy votes to get reelected That is not social justice or any other kind of justice. -- Thomas Sowell
The power to tax involves the power to destroy. -- Chief Justice John Marshall, McCulloch v. Maryland, 1819
We don't have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven't taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much. -- Ronald Reagan, Address to National Association of Realtors, March 28, 1982
The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public moneys. -- Thomas Jefferson, 1821
The most laughable White House criticism is that tax cuts are a 'free lunch.' The American people's work created that money. Only in Washington could there be a belief that letting people keep more of what they create is a giveaway. -- Forbes, August 26, 1996
What does 'fair' mean? In the dictionary, it means that everyone has to do about the same. Ten percent of a million dollars is still ten times more than ten percent of a hundred thousand dollars, and twenty times more than ten percent of fifty thousand. But 'fairness' in the tax code has come to mean that we take all the money we can from successful people and dole it back ... and what do we end up with? We end up with a jobs program for bureaucrats, and accountants, and lawyers, and somewhere along the way the taxpaying citizens are just plain forgotten. I'll tell you what I think 'fair' means. I think it means we all bear the same burden in the same proportion. I think it means that the system not only allows, but encourages us to participate in the economy. -- Tom Clancy, Executive Orders, 1996
The principle involved here is time-honored and true: and that is -- it's your money. -- Robert Dole
The purpose of a tax cut is to leave more money where it belongs -- in the hands of the working men and working women who earned it in the first place. -- Robert Dole, Barron's August 12, 1996
What does it mean when Republicans and Democrats alike warn us about the 'pain' involved in cutting government spending - in their spending less of our money? For the average citizen, what pain is there in his keeping more of his money to invest it the way he wants? Taxes cost people. Tax cuts do not cost government. -- Theodore J. Forstmann,founding chairman, Empower America, as reported in Forbes, October 14, 1996
Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other people's money --- only for wanting to keep your own money. -- Joseph Sobran, (1946- ) American writer and editor. Formerly senior editor at National Review.
If you would not confront your neighbor and demand his money at the point of a gun to solve every new problem that may appear in your life, you should not allow the government to do it for you. -- William E. Simon
A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. -- G. Gordon Liddy
People who relieve others of their money with guns are called robbers. It does not alter the immorality of the act when the income transfer is carried out by government. -- Cal Thomas
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