Quotes About Taxes

Rich people don't pay taxes? Of course they pay taxes - they pay tons in taxes. They pay for everyone else who doesn't pay taxes.

I dislike paying taxes as much as anyone, but yes, taxes are the price of civilization. There is no America without taxes. The question isn't, "Do we want to have taxes?" The question is, "How heavy is the burden, and who bears that burden"?

First, the oil and gas business pays its fair share of taxes. Despite the current debate on energy taxes, few businesses pay more in taxes than oil and gas companies. The worldwide effective tax rate for our industry in 2010 was 40 percent. That's higher than the U.S. statutory rate of 35 percent and the rate for manufacturers of 26.5 percent.

The most absurd public opinion polls are those on taxes. Now, if there is one thing we know about taxes, it is that people do not want to pay them. If they wanted to pay them, there would be no need for taxes. People would gladly figure out how much of their money that the government deserves and send it in. And yet we routinely hear about opinion polls that reveal that the public likes the tax level as it is and might even like it higher. Next they will tell us that the public thinks the crime rate is too low, or that the American people would really like to be in more auto accidents.

The larger the percentage of the national income taken by taxes the greater the deterrent to private production and employment. When the total tax burden grows beyond a bearable size, the problem of devising taxes that will not discourage and disrupt production becomes insoluble.

Whoever is for higher taxes, feel free to pay higher taxes.

I've never had it so good in terms of taxes. I am paying the lowest tax rate that I've ever paid in my life. Now, that's crazy. And if you look at the Forbes 400, they are paying a lower rate, accounting payroll taxes, than their secretary or whomever around their office. On average. And so I think that actually people in my situation should be paying more tax. I think the rest of the country should be paying less.

The reality is that the workforce relative to the number of people retired has shrunk and today in America there are only 3.3 working Americans paying payroll taxes to support each individual currently retired and collecting Social Security taxes.

The most pernicious of his [Obama] proposals will be the massive Make Work Pay refundable tax credit. Dressed up as a tax cut, it will be a national welfare program, guaranteeing a majority of American households an annual check to 'refund' taxes they never paid. And it will eliminate the need for about 20% of American households to pay income taxes, lifting the proportion that need not do so to a majority of the voting population.

Donald Trump has broken his first promise [to release taxes]. Second he stood on this stage last week and when Hillary said you haven't been paying taxes, he said, that makes me smart. So it's smart not to pay for our military. It's smart not to pay for veterans, it's smart not to pay for teachers and I guess all of us who do pay for those things I guess we're stupid.

I talked to a lot of employers who just are, are fearful of what's coming next out of Washington. It's all the spending, it's all the debt. It's their national energy tax, they want to call it cap and trade - more mandates, higher costs, more taxes. Their healthcare bill - more mandates, higher costs, higher taxes.

...in terms of business mistakes that I've seen over a long lifetime, I would say that trying to minimize taxes too much is one of the great standard causes of really dumb mistakes. I see terrible mistakes from people being overly motivated by tax considerations. Warren and I personally don't drill oil wells. We pay our taxes. And we've done pretty well, so far. Anytime somebody offers you a tax shelter from here on in life, my advice would be don't buy it.

In Britain, polls show large majorities in favour of mansion taxes and higher taxes on the finance sector.

Up until 1986, the top marginal rate, the top statutory rate was 50 percent. Now it's 35 percent. And all the pressure is on to lower that even further. And this just doesn't make a great deal of sense. When people say, 'Oh, we can't raise taxes on the rich. They'll go on strike, they'll move to another country.' But within recent memory, it hasn't been that long ago that we had rates that were substantially higher. And these people did just fine. I just think that there's a disconnect between the facts of what taxes do and the sort of mythology of what they do.

I have paid taxes every year, a lot of taxes.

Donald Trump is a - the owner of a lot of real estate that he manages, he may well pay no income taxes. We know for a fact that he didn't pay any income taxes in 1978, 1979, 1984, 1992 and 1994. We know because of the reports of the New Jersey Casino Control Commission. We don't know about any year after that.

The British use a system where the profits a corporation reports to shareholders is what they pay taxes on. Whereas in America we require corporations to keep two sets of books, one for shareholders and one for the IRS, and the IRS records are secret. For publicly-traded companies, the British system would tend to align the interests of the government with the interests of the company because the company wants to report the biggest possible profit. Though, all wealthy countries have high taxes as wealth requires lots of common goods, from clean water to public education to a justice system.

Reagan is held up to us as an example of never raising taxes. Correction: Reagan raised taxes six of his eight years as president. Why? He was a pragmatist, not doctrinaire. He saw problems emerging, and when his policies faltered he changed his views. Flexibility, not rigidity.

It will be sufficient to point to the enormous burdens which armaments place on the economic, social, and intellectual resources of a nation, as well as on its budget and taxes.

We're going to look awfully stupid if we give income tax relief to people who do not pay income taxes.

I've always been paying my taxes and I've always been trying to comply.

In time of this grave national danger, when all excess income should go to win the war, no American citizen ought to have a net income, after he has paid his taxes, of more than $25,000 a year.

I kind of like carbon taxes because we already know how to apply them. We already have apparatus in place. When we talk about these other solutions - like a billion tons of iron filings in the ocean or putting sunshades between us and the sun - they're huge. We have no idea if they will work. We have no idea what their nasty consequences might be. And it's unlikely we can do them anyway.

I should say the leadership's proposal in the Senate and the House are very unpopular. And when people realize it will raise taxes, raise their insurance premiums cost and explode the deficit, they think twice about it.

The Government has been compelled to levy taxes which unavoidably hit large sections of the population. The Italian people are disciplined, silent and calm, they work and know that there is a Government which governs, and know, above all, that if this Government hits cruelly certain sections of the Italian people, it does not so out of caprice, but from the supreme necessity of national order.

The Iraq war was fought by one-half of one percent of us. And unless we were part of that small group or had a relative who was, we went about our lives as usual most of the time: no draft, no new taxes, no changes. Not so for the small group who fought the war and their families.

Democrats believe, plausibly, that middle-class entitlements are instantly addictive and, because there is no known detoxification, that class, when facing future choices between trimming entitlements or increasing taxes, will choose the latter.

I do believe that billionaires and multi-millionaires should be paying more in taxes.

I don't know that the conservatives truly realize this yet, but they are talking about repealing the mandate that says you must have health insurance, and they're talking about repleaing the taxes that help to finance it.

Salaries haven't kept up with inflation, and there is such anger coming out of Washington about immigrants that I think it has curtailed the ability of local folks here to hire immigrants, .. I really believe it starts from the top, and the policy continues to be one of ignoring people at the bottom, cutting taxes for those on the top and spending a lot of money for a war built on lies.

I believe - we all pay taxes. I'm happy to pay it, but I hate to have it abused, money wasted, no accountability. That's going to bother you.

The collection of taxes which are not absolutely required, which do not beyond reasonable doubt contribute to public welfare, is only a species of legalized larceny. Under this Republic the rewards of industry belong to those who earn them.

Governments don't reduce deficits by raising taxes on the people; governments reduce deficits by controlling spending and stimulating new wealth.

Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.

Let's stop for a second and remember where we were eight years ago [in 2008]. We had the worst financial crisis, the Great Recession, the worst since the 1930s. That was in large part because of tax policies that slashed taxes on the wealthy, failed to invest in the middle class, took their eyes off of Wall Street, and created a perfect storm.

It took the national debt two hundred years to reach $1 trillion. Supply Side Economics quadrupled the national debt to over $4 trillion in twelve years (1980-1992) under the Republicans. Bill Clinton actually paid down the national debt. How did he do it? He raised taxes. It produced the longest sustained economic expansion in U.S. History.

I think that we've had an economy that's been out of balance for too long. So the general principle of raising taxes on higher income Americans, like myself, and providing relief to those who haven't benefited as much from this new global economy, I think is a sound one.

No government can guarantee security. It can only tax production, distribution and service and gradually crush the power to pay taxes. That settles nothing. It only uses up the gains of the past and postpones the developments of the future.

There's not an appropriations bill in the last 10 years that the-that Democrats passed in the Congress. We haven't spent any money of your taxes in the last decade.

It's really a question of fairness and what kind of country we're going to live in. There are 22,000 people making over $1 million. They're paying an effective tax rate in the teens. As Warren Buffett said, he pays less in taxes effectively than his secretary does. That's not right.

To conform within rational limits to a given style is no more servile than to pay one's taxes or to write according to the rule of grammar.

Opposing taxes is a key conservative value.

More than ever before, Americans are suffering from back problems: back taxes, back rent, back auto payments.

Anybody has a right to evade taxes if he can get away with it. No citizen has a moral obligation to assist in maintaining his government

One of the most lethal mistakes a public official can make is raising taxes and not paying your own.

If you're white and wealthy, Texas is a great place, however, no Texas governor Republican or Democrat is eager to raise taxes and without that you can't expand access to health care or decrease the cost of higher education.

I paid $1.9 billion in taxes in my lifetime.

Public officials are permitted to finance or subsidize their own activities through taxes. That is, they are permitted to engage in and live off, what in private dealings between private law subjects is prohibited and considered 'theft' and 'stolen loot.'