Popular quotes about Taxes! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 27
American businesses and upper incomes pay a larger portion of the federal taxes of our national taxes than any country in the world.
Jim DeMintIn every major war we have fought in the 19th and 20th centuries. Americans have been asked to pay higher taxes - and nonessential programs have been cut - to support the military effort. Yet during this Iraq war, taxes have been lowered and domestic spending has climbed. In contrast to World War I, World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam, for most Americans this conflict has entailed no economic sacrifice. The only people really sacrificing for this war are the troops and their families.
Robert HormatsI'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.
Howard Warren Buffett[George Bush] has raised taxes on the people driving pickup trucks and lowered taxes on the people riding in limousines. We can do better.
William J. 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. BushWhenever 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 NelsonIt was an easy thing to tax for a young country. And then gradually we moved to property taxes, manufacturing taxes, and the income tax was the answer to a populist demand: Let's go after the rich guys. We got into World War I, and they raised the rates and started taxing the rich. Then we got into World War II, and that's when they taxed everybody, because they just needed more revenue.
T.R. ReidIn some cities they tear down buildings to save taxes. They might try tearing down some taxes to save buildings.
Ken SchoollandHillary Clinton is raising your taxes, folks. You can look at me. She's raising your taxes really high. And what that's going to do is a disaster for the country.
Donald TrumpWarren Buffett's company reportedly owes the IRS a billion dollars in back taxes. When he said he wasn't paying enough taxes, he wasn't kidding.
Jay LenoAmericans tend not to be too enthusiastic about having their taxes raised again....But if the American people aren't going to accept it, if the politicians don't have the courage to raise taxes, what are we facing down the road?
Judy WoodruffCongress should know how to levy taxes, and if it doesn't know how to collect them, then a man is a fool to pay the taxes.
J. P. MorganHe [Donald Trump] said in the debate - he said, gosh, I'm being audited for two years. Then he said three years. Then he said maybe five years. Listen, if there's a problem in his taxes, the voters have a right to know, because come September, October, the general election, folks in the media are going to make a heyday about any problems in his taxes.
Ted CruzImagine his delight after it 'leaked' that he will propose raising taxes on the wealthy by $320 billion over the next 10 years, including increases to the capital gains and inheritance taxes.
John PodhoretzThe IRS said today anyone with a refund coming from their 2001 taxes will lose it if they don't pick it up by April 15th. If it is more then three years they will just keep it. How come it doesn't work that way with back taxes?
Jay LenoWould 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.According to the Tax Foundation, the average American worker works 127 days of the year just to pay his taxes. That means that government owns 36 percent of the average American's output-which is more than feudal serfs owed the robber barons. That 36 percent is more than the average American spends on food, clothing and housing. In other words, if it were not for taxes, the average American's living standard would at least double.
Paul Craig RobertsThe 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 LimbaughI think that my foundation uses the money better than the government does. In any event, I do pay taxes.
George SorosThe income tax is a twentieth-century socialist experiment that has failed. Before the income tax was imposed on us just 80 years ago, government had no claim to our income. Only sales, excise, and tariff taxes were allowed.
Alan KeyesPresident [Barack] Obama's staking his reelection hopes on rebuilding America's middle class. He wants higher taxes on the wealthy, tougher rules on Wall Street, and everyone else to get a fair shot to succeed. Republicans can cry "class warfare" if they want, but as the president put it today, it's about this country's welfare.
Chris MatthewsAs a businessman, Donald Trump has been associated with some of the worst excesses of a particular style of value-extracting and asset stripping capitalism: set up businesses, let them fail, avoid paying suppliers, use bankruptcy laws to avoid taxes for decades, then set up another business somewhere else. It is this model that is the cause of many problems we see today.
Mariana MazzucatoWe are under the stifling regulation and taxes of a predominantly left-wing type of thinking and philosophy. The eight years of Barack Obama have shrouded this country in punitive regulations. We haven't had economic growth higher than one and a half percent for the last eight or nine years, and that was done on purpose. There have been robust times in the past, and there are a lot of people right now that are doing well and are growing. But generally it ought to be much better in the past. There needs to be an economic revival.
Rush LimbaughI 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.
Paul R. EhrlichIncreased revenues, meaning higher taxes, will be a central element of any successful long-term budget plan, and President Obama is right to insist that the wealthy - the slice of America that has come through the recession in by far the best financial health - should provide those funds.
Steven RattnerSome of you in this room support higher taxes. I welcome your enthusiasm and am glad to report that the IRS takes both money orders and checks.
George W. BushThe more acquisitions the government makes abroad, the more taxes the people have to pay at home.
Thomas PaineI only have disdain for New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He raised taxes and has increased regulations. What else is new? He's a bully who wants to micro-manage people's lives by mandate, not persuasion.
Mark SkousenTrump 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 BloomWe ought to pay down the national debt, ... The American people are tired of people who make promises about cutting taxes that they cannot keep.
John McCainNow 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 TrumboAmerica is fundamentally conservative. People want a strong national defense. They want low taxes. They want individual freedoms. There's no doubt that the Republican party has got to rebuild. We've got to restructure. We've got to let new leaders come to the fore. But at the end of the day, those fundamental core principles are the ones that have made the nation great, not just the party affecting them.
Liz CheneyAlmost all of us have wondered at one point or another about the taxes we pay: Where does the money go?
Judy WoodruffMan is not like other animals in the ways that are really significant: Animals have instincts, we have taxes.
Erving GoffmanI 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.
Jonathan KarlWhere is the politician who has not promised to fight to the death for lower taxes- and who has not proceeded to vote for the very spending projects that make tax cuts impossible?
Barry GoldwaterI took in a foster kid that I wanted to adopt in the state where I live, and I pay taxes, said to me, based on not your morality, not on how good you are as a mother, not on how much you've given to foster kids in Florida, based on the facts that you're in love with a woman, you can't keep her.
Rosie O'DonnellI 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 AbbottHe [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 ReidMitt Romney is coming under fire because even though he is a multimillionaire, he only paid 15 percent in taxes. That's not a tax, that's barely a tip.
Jay LenoThe U.S. states that allow for citizens' initiatives tend to have fewer laws and lower taxes than the ones that don't. But the beauty of the system is that it encourages the spread of best practice.
Daniel HannanThe U.S. has the most complicated and difficult tax system in the world; we've made it hard to file and pay taxes.
T.R. ReidThen there was the man who declared in court, he wasn't a person. "Excuse me, sir, why haven't you paid your taxes." "Well, as you can clearly see, I am not a person." "Well, you look like a person." "No it's all done with mirrors, trust me!"
Lewis BlackTaxes are a barbaric remnant of ancient times in which early farmers, tied to the land, no longer able to roam freely, unable to fight back with awkward agricultural tools the way they once could with hunting implements, became victims, first, of itinerant plunderers, then of bandits settling down beside them to become the governments we know today.
L. Neil Smith