Popular quotes about Taxes! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 15
Politicians like to talk about the income tax when they talk about overtaxing the rich, but the income tax is just one part of the total tax system. There are sales taxes, Medicare taxes, social security taxes, unemployment taxes, gasoline taxes, excise taxes - and when you add up all of those taxes [many of which are quite regressive], and then you look at how they affect the rich and the poor, you essentially end up with a system in which the best off 20 percent of Americans pay one percentage point more of their income than the worst off 20 percent of Americans.
David Cay JohnstonBy the standards of honest, if unorthodox, accounting, government workers don't pay taxes, but are paid out of taxes. In other words, they pay taxes out of money confiscated from taxpayers, who, in turn, pay taxes twice: on their own income and on the income of members of the bureaucracy. At the very least, this should disqualify state workers from voting.
Ilana MercerWe are angry about paying the highest income taxes and property taxes in the nation and getting less and less for it. We are angry about our incompetent, dysfunctional government that pays no attention to the desires of the people. We are angry about the cesspool of corruption and conflicts of interests and self-dealing that is Albany.
Carl PaladinoI believe that Congress will and must act before then to renew its objections to multiple and discriminatory taxes on the Internet, as well as to taxes that inhibit Internet access.
John McCainThat's why I'm very proud of being American. I'm proud to pay taxes. I pay a lot of taxes, but it sure beats the alternative.
Payne StewartA certain amount of taxes is of course indispensable to carry on essential government functions. Reasonable taxes for this purpose need not hurt production much.
Henry HazlittAny one may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which will best pay the Treasury; there is not even a patriotic duty to increase ones taxes.
Learned HandBut I benefit from the taxes I pay because I know how to access the benefits of the taxes.
Dar WilliamsI'm not going to tell people that I will raise your incomes and not your taxes, and not mean it, because I don't want to see the kind of struggle that the middle class is going through exemplified by these promises that would raise taxes and make it much more difficult for many, many Americans to get ahead and stay ahead. That is not my agenda.
Hillary ClintonIf I were a candidate for running, I'd say, "Look at what the economy has done." It's strong. We've created a lot of jobs. I'd be telling people that the Democrats will raise your taxes. I'd be reminding people that tax cuts have worked in terms of stimulating the economy. I'd be reminding people there's a philosophical difference between those who want to raise taxes and have the government spend the money, and those of us who say, "You get to spend the money the way you want to see fit. It's your money."
George W. BushIn Britain, polls show large majorities in favour of mansion taxes and higher taxes on the finance sector.
Geoff MulganRemember that all tax revenue is the result of holding a gun to somebody's head. Not paying taxes is against the law. If you don't pay your taxes, you'll be fined. If you don't pay the fine, you'll be jailed. If you try to escape from jail, you'll be shot. ... Therefore, every time the government spends money on anything, you have to ask yourself, 'Would I kill my kindly, gray-haired mother for this?'
P. J. O'RourkeThe most sinister of all taxes is the inflation tax and it is the most regressive. It hits the poor and the middle class. When you destroy a currency by creating money out of thin air to pay the bills, the value of the dollar goes down, and people get hit with a higher cost of living. It's the middle class that's being wiped out. It is most evil of all taxes.
Ron PaulThe 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.
David Cay JohnstonIt seems to me that instead of cutting taxes, we ought to be increasing the taxes to pay off the deficit, rather than let that thing build up to the point where our grandchildren's grandchildren are going to be paying for our period of time and our years at the helm.
Walter CronkitePothinus: "Is it possible that Caesar, the conqueror of the world, has time to occupy himself with such a trifle as our taxes?" Caesar: "My friend, taxes are the chief business of a conqueror of the world.
George Bernard ShawReagan 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.
Eugene JareckiWhy should an atheist pay more taxes so that a church which he despises should pay no taxes? That's a fair question. How can the apologists for the church exemption answer it?
E. Haldeman-Juliushy is it you can impose a new tax and keep your economy growing? Only if you cut other taxes by exactly the same amount. The problem with carbon taxes around the world has been you dump a new tax onto the economy and it's just adding more tax.
Christy ClarkFewer and fewer people are paying larger and larger percentage of the tax burden, as you know, almost half the people pay no income taxes at all. We're going to have more people in the wagon than we got pulling the wagon before long and that's not going to work. Those jobless numbers, you know, go hand-in-hand with those tax numbers.
Fred ThompsonYou take the huge income that comes with a big gas tax, and you use it to pay off regressive taxes like the FICA [Federal Insurance Contributions Act] tax. You can help the poor in other ways besides giving them cheap gas. You want to send the message that people want to be as efficient as possible using gasoline until we can transition away from that need entirely.
Paul R. EhrlichI will eliminate capital-gains taxes for the small businesses and the startups that will create the high-wage, high-tech jobs of tomorrow
Barack ObamaThere is no better way to return the matter of taxation to full public discusssion than to repeal the withholding taxes on wages and salaries. Only when the American people are confronted with the enormous excesses of government in a personal and direct way - by an annual bill for services rendered - will they be able to make an informed judgment about which services they want and which ones they can do without.
Karl HessNow the truth of the matter is that there are a lot of things people don't understand. Take the Einstein theory. Take taxes. Take love. Do you understand them? Neither do I. But they exist. They happen.
Dalton TrumboI will tell you this: I will not raise taxes on the middle-class to pay for these programs.
William J. ClintonThe Value-Added Tax, a sales tax that applies at every level of business transactions, is an easy tax for governments to collect, and a hard tax to evade. So it makes the job of raising revenue easier. The revenues from the VAT can then be used to lower taxes on income and saving and investment. The Value-Added tax doesn't penalize work or saving; it's a tax on buying stuff.
T.R. ReidI don't blame or complain about things like the economy, the government, taxes, employees, gas prices, or any of the external things that I don't have control over. The only thing I have control over is my response to these things.
Jack CanfieldI think that the best things that governments can do for productivity is not whack on new taxes and, if we can get institutions like schools and hospitals functioning better, well that's obviously good for the overall productiveness of our society.
Tony AbbottI think everybody benefitted from what I am calling a bubble finance system, a bubble economy and if we're ever going to right the system, we're going to have to stop this explosion of the federal debt. We need huge spending cuts, OK? Don't get me wrong, we need to raise regular taxes too but even beyond that it's not going to hurt if we want to reset the system to ask those who have benefitted disproportionately - remember, we got $60 trillion of net worth in the household sector. $45 trillion of that belongs to the top 5 percent.
David StockmanThere'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.
Chaka FattahMy husband said, 'Now you need to go and get a post-doctorate degree in tax law.' Tax law! I hate taxes. Why should I go and do something like that? But the Lord says, 'Be submissive, wives, you are to be submissive to your husbands.'
Michele BachmannNobody told me when I became a Democrat that that involved opposition to lower taxes.
Robert TorricelliAnybody 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
J. P. MorganHillary Clinton talks about health care. Why didn't she do something about it? She talks about taxes. Why didn't she do something about it? She doesn't do anything about anything other than talk.
Donald TrumpMany scientists and economists also say putting a price on carbon through carbon taxes and/or cap-and-trade is necessary.
David SuzukiOnce upon a time, government budgets were balanced, our money was sound, the streets were safe, and taxes imposed by all levels of government took less than 10% of our income.
Harry BrowneYou are told from the moment you enter school that time is constant. It never changes. It is one of those set things in life that you can always rely on... much like death and taxes. There will always be sixty seconds in a minute. There will always be sixty minutes in an hour. And there will always be twenty-four hours in a day. Time was not fluctuating. It moved on at the same, constant pace at every moment in your life. And that was the biggest load of crap that I'd ever been taught in school.
S.C. Stephens"I pay my taxes," says somebody, as if that were an act of virtue instead of one of compulsion.
Robert Menzies