Popular quotes about Taxes! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 17
I'm the one who will not raise taxes. My opponent now says he'll raise them as a last resort, or a third resort. But when a politician talks like that, you know that's one resort he'll be checking into. My opponent, my opponent won't rule out raising taxes. But I will. And The Congress will push me to raise taxes and I'll say no. And they'll push, and I'll say no, and they'll push again, and I'll say, to them, Read my lips: no new taxes.
George H. W. BushThe 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.
Llewellyn RockwellAmerican businesses and upper incomes pay a larger portion of the federal taxes of our national taxes than any country in the world.
Jim DeMintAny 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 HandI'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 ClintonNothing in life is certain except death, taxes and the second law of thermodynamics. All three are processes in which useful or accessible forms of some quantity, such as energy or money, are transformed into useless, inaccessible forms of the same quantity. That is not to say that these three processes don't have fringe benefits: taxes pay for roads and schools; the second law of thermodynamics drives cars, computers and metabolism; and death, at the very least, opens up tenured faculty positions.
Seth LloydWhenever you get involved with talking about rights, you're talking about being a citizen. You're talking about being a citizen in capitalism; you're talking about what rights are granted to what identities, under what laws, and all that is a big mix. Marriage is, among many other things, a formality to channel capital through a family. And that's why the big DOMA lawsuit was about paying too many taxes! "I wouldn't have had to pay all these taxes if Theodora had been Theo" - that was the big tagline. It's all about protecting assets.
Maggie NelsonRemember 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'RourkeUp 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.
Bruce BartlettTaxes are paid in the sweat of every man who labors. If those taxes are excessive, they are reflected in idle factories, in tax-sold farms, and in hordes of hungry people, tramping the streets and seeking jobs in vain. Our workers may never see a tax bill, but they pay. They pay in deductions from wages, in increased cost of what they buy, or - as now - in broad unemployment throughout the land.
Franklin D. RooseveltWould I feel comfortable with Hillary Clinton taking care of my money down there? That I pay the taxes, corporate taxes down there? I wouldn't feel comfortable at all. They've just continuously spent money and people are up to here with it.
Doug Ford, Jr.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.
Hillary ClintonI can make a firm pledge, under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.
Barack ObamaIn constitutional states, liberty is compensation for heavy taxes; in dictatorships, the subsititue is light taxes.
Baron de MontesquieuThe state of New York's got this group of people called smokers, and they know they're addicted, and despite all the efforts to make 'em quit, they know they can't. So they just see a pile of money when they see these people. And they think because they're addicted, they can't not buy the product, so they just keep raising taxes and raising taxes, and they expect people just to come up with the money from somewhere and pay it.
Rush LimbaughTaxes on capital, taxes on labor, inflation, bureaucratic regulation, minimum wage laws, are all - to different degrees - unnecessary slices of the wedge that stand between an individual's effort and reward for that effort.
Jack KempOf all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few... No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
James MadisonReagan 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 JareckiI think I have the right to know what Steve Forbes paid in taxes - I don't think there should be a law. I think there should be a presumption. I wouldn't vote for a guy who wouldn't reveal what he paid in taxes. That kind of thing.
Esther DysonSo, for instance, let me make this clear: You know I signed a statement. I will not raise taxes on anybody. I don't want to raise taxes on the American people.
Mitt RomneyI think that my foundation uses the money better than the government does. In any event, I do pay taxes.
George SorosWe no longer have a significant middle class in the US due to Barack Obama's job-killing ban on oil drilling in Zion Park. While a small middle class remains in the coastal blue states, our tax bill devastates them by curbing deductions for state and local taxes and large mortgages. In a few years, everyone except the 1% will be a tricklee.
Gary CohnRecently the country has seen too much of our legislators, seeing them as a gaggle of check-kiting, judge-smearing deadbeats who don't pay their restaurant bills but raise their pay in the middle of the night. Many Americans-this columnist included-hitherto said tax increases are justified by the budget deficit now say: Give that mob more money? Never. Not a nickel of new taxes until term limits change the political culture on Capital Hill.
George WillLook at what I am proposing, and we [wih Bernie Sanders] have a vigorous agreement here. We both want to reign in the excesses of Wall Street. I also want to reign in the excesses of Johnson Controls that we bailed out when they were an autoparts company, and we saved the auto industry, and now they want to avoid paying taxes.
Hillary ClintonYou 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. EhrlichIn 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.
Franklin D. RooseveltIn sorting out my feelings and beliefs, there is, however, one piece of moral ground of which I am absolutely certain: if I were to be murdered I would not want my murderer executed. I would not want my death avenged. Especially by government--which can't be trusted to control its own bureaucrats or collect taxes equitably or fill a pothole, much less decide which of its citizens to kill.
Helen PrejeanIt's dark and it's divisive - deporting 11 million people, talking about law and order, calling every group of people in America names, talking about cutting taxes on the wealthy, feeling like Donald Trump can bring more nuclear weapons into the world - I mean, everything he's talked about is a form of change.
Hillary ClintonDemocrats 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.
George WillTrump can, like every government, trigger a short boom with borrowed money, just like he has announced. He appears to want to adopt the economic policy approach favored by Republicans of putting lots of money into building roads and cutting taxes. Markets like that. But, at the end of the day, someone always has to foot the bill.
Nicholas BloomI think that taxes would be fair if we first get rid of the tax code. This is the ultimate solution, not to just say we're going to trim around the edges, not to say that we will try to simplify a little of this and a little of that. The problem is, replace the tax code, so we can establish tax fairness for everybody.
Herman CainOhioans know who cut their taxes. Nobody else on the ballot did. Ohioans know who is responsible for job growth, and nobody else on the ballot was.
Tom RidgePuerto Rico is a government that is spending money that it doesn't have. What's coming in and what's going out don't match. That is, what they are receiving in taxes is not sufficient to cover the spending that they are taking on. And any entity that does that, whether a family, a business, a government, is going to go broke and bankrupt. They are asking to be given the right to declare bankruptcy, which I think should be an option, as a last resort, if there is no other resource.
Marco RubioMy finely honed political instincts tell me that almost nobody believes that they should be paying higher taxes.
Barack ObamaBuffett was a billionaire who drove his own car, did his own taxes, and still lived in a home he had bought in 1958 for $31,500. He seemed to answer to a deeply rooted, distinctly American mythology, in which decency and common sense triumphed over cosmopolitan guile, and in which an idealized past held firm against a rootless and too hurriedly changing present.
Roger Lowenstein...it is not only the general principles of justice that are infringed, or at least set aside, by the exclusion of women, merely as women, from any share in the representation; that exclusion is also repugnant to the particular principles of the British Constitution. It violates one of the oldest of our constitutional maxims...that taxation and representation should be co-extensive. Do not women pay taxes?
John Stuart MillHe [Mitt Romney] didn't pay taxes for 10 years! Now, do I know that that's true? Well, I'm not certain, but obviously he can't release those tax returns. How would it look?
Harry ReidNo 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.
Henry FordGovernment has no wealth, and when a politician promises to give you something for nothing, he must first confiscate that wealth from you -- either by direct taxes, or by the cruelly indirect tax of inflation.
John WayneIf [Donald Trump] is paid zero [taxes], that means zero for troops, zero for vets, zero for schools or health.
Hillary ClintonNobody told me when I became a Democrat that that involved opposition to lower taxes.
Robert TorricelliA lot of times in the rhetoric, people forget the facts. And the facts are that thousands of small businesses-Hispanically owned or otherwise-pay taxes at the highest marginal rate.
George W. BushImmigration. There's two plans on the table. Hillary and I believe in comprehensive immigration reform. Donald Trump believes in deportation nation. You've got to pick your choice. Hillary and I want a bipartisan reform that will put keeping families together as the top goal, second, that will help focus enforcement efforts on those who are violent, third, that will do more border control, and, fourth, that will provide a path to citizenship for those who work hard, pay taxes, play by the rules, and take criminal background record checks.
Tim KaineSenior executives can, after a fashion, get a portion of their pay tax-free. You defer part of your income and not have to pay taxes on it, and then when you retire you have the company buy a life insurance policy on you using that money. The company can deduct that money because it is a business expense, and the money will get paid out to your children or grandchildren when you die, so you have effectively given them your money and it's never been taxed.
David Cay Johnston