Quotes About Taxes

It is easier to start taxes than to stop them. A tax an inch long can easily become a yard long. That has been the history of the income tax. Would not the sales tax be likely to have a similar history [in the U.S.]? ... Canadian newspapers report that an increase in the sales tax threatens to drive the Mackenzie King administration out of office. Canada began with a sales tax of 2%.... Starting this month the tax is 6%. The burden, in other words, has already been increased 200% ... What the U.S. needs is not new taxes, is not more taxes, but fewer and lower taxes.

President Lyndon Johnson's administration was known for his War on Poverty. President Obama's will become notable for his War on Prosperity. We're speaking, of course, of Obama's plans to hike income taxes on the most wealthy 2 or 3 percent of the nation. He's not just raising the top rate to 39.6 percent; he's also disallowing about one-third of top earner's deductions, whether for state and local taxes, charitable contributions or mortgage interest. This is an effective hike in their taxes by an average of about 20 percent.

This is what class warfare looks like: The Business Roundtable - representing Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and others - has called on Congress to raise the eligibility age of Social Security and Medicare to 70, cut Social Security and veterans' COLAs, raise taxes on working families and cut taxes for the largest corporations in America.

Let me tell you, the heart of my tax proposal: I will not raise taxes on the American people. I will not raise taxes on middle-income Americans.

That'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.

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.

And the cornerstone of my economic policies, when I first got elected, was cutting taxes on everybody on who paid taxes.

Congress also did something new, which is, they delayed for two years two new taxes - one on medical devices and one on high-end health insurance plans. Those taxes are supposed to help pay for President Obama's health care law, but they're really unpopular.

Warren 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.

The Democrats would want to keep the taxes. And Republicans want to do away with taxes that are driving up the costs of premiums. So, I think it would be hard to see a scenario where Democrats would be willing to come to the table in good faith and actually work with us on a solution that meets those requirements.

You can’t tax business. Business doesn’t pay taxes. It collects taxes.

We are sticking with the plan. We have a plan to get taxes down, to get regulation down, to get productivity up, to create jobs, to reduce taxes, to boost prosperity. The plan is working and we are sticking with it.

People want just taxes more than they want lower taxes. They want to know that every man is paying his proportionate share according to his wealth.

Taxes 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.

Nothing is more calculated to make a demagogue popular than a constantly reiterated demand for heavy taxes on the rich. Capital levies and high income taxes on the larger incomes are extraordinarily popular with the masses, who do not have to pay them.

If, at the end of the day, we need to raise taxes, we should raise taxes.

So what I have said with regard to Boeing and GE and other multinationals that pay zero taxes, you know what we're going to do? We're going to end that loophole. They are going to pay their fair share of taxes.

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.

There are two distinct classes of men - those who pay taxes and those who receive and live upon taxes.

As president, Reagan worked very well with Democrats to do big things. It is true that he worked to reduce the size of government and cut federal taxes and he eliminated many regulations, but he also raised taxes when necessary.

I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible. ... because I believe the big problem is not taxes, the big problem is spending.

Fewer 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.

The value of science to a republican people, the security it gives to liberty by enlightening the minds of its citizens, the protection it affords against foreign power, the virtue it inculcates, the just emulation of the distinction it confers on nations foremost in it; in short, its identification with power, morals, order and happiness (which merits to it premiums of encouragement rather than repressive taxes), are considerations [that should] always [be] present and [bear] with their just weight.

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

It's tax season. When I woke this morning and realized it was tax season, I said, My God, didn't we just pay taxes last year?

You 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.

An across-the-board, top-to-bottom cut in personal and corporate income taxes ... to expand the incentives and opportunities of private expenditures.

A realistic definition of risk recognizes the potential loss of capital through inflation and taxes, and would include at least the following two factors: The probability that the investment you chose will preserve your capital over the time you intend to invest your funds. The probability the investments you select will outperform alternative investments for this period.

The history of taxation shows that taxes which are inherently excessive are not paid. The high rates inevitably put pressure upon the taxpayer to withdraw his capital from productive business and invest it in tax-exempt securities or to find other lawful methods of avoiding the realization of taxable income. The result is that the sources of taxation are drying up; wealth is failing to carry its share of the tax burden; and capital is being diverted into channels which yield neither revenue to the Government nor profit to the people.

If you raise taxes on millionaires and billionaires, you'll do nothing to address the debt and the deficit. And the thing you might do is you might finally put this economy over another cliff. These millionaires and billionaires are the folks that try to create jobs and help grow the economy.

The people suffer from famine because of the multitude of taxes consumed by their superiors. It is through this that they suffer famine.

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

If you want to know why Republicans and conservatives are in a political crisis, you need only consider the fact that the Right's deeply held view now boils down to this: Taxes should not go up on the wealthy, and your health benefits should be cut.

[T]he State . . . gives idle capital the power of increase, and, through interest, rent, profit, and taxes, robs industrious labor of its products.

The combination of Obamacare and taxes would be a disaster.

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

Indeed, ask every man separately whether he thinks it laudable and worthy of a man of this age to hold a position from which he receives a salary disproportionate to his work; to take from the people--often in poverty--taxes to be spent on constructing cannon, torpedoes, and other instruments of butchery, so as to make war on people with whom we wish to be at peace, and who feel the same wish in regard to us; or to receive a salary for devoting one's whole life to constructing these instruments of butchery, or to preparing oneself and others for the work of murder.

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.

I think that anybody who works and pays taxes ought to have a right for citizenship.

Houseless: Having paid all taxes on household goods.

Not over my dead body will they raise your taxes.

That is what is so marvelous about Europe; the people long ago learned that space and beauty and quiet refuges in a great city, where children may play and old people sit in the sun, are of far more value to the inhabitants than real estate taxes and contractors' greed.

I argue that in the long run, the US would be on a far more financially secure footing if we recalibrate how we spend about two-to-three percent of the country's GNP, using state and federal taxes to create pools of money for spending on America's poor - which would, as numerous economists have argued in recent years, create virtuous spending circles, since those on lower incomes spend more of each extra dollar in their possession than do those on higher incomes.

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.

If [Donald Trump] is paid zero [taxes], that means zero for troops, zero for vets, zero for schools or health.

When taxes are too high, people go hungry.

The left's obsession with corporations as a spawn of evil is pathological paranoia. A corporation is just one form of organizing a private business enterprise for purposes of limiting personal liability, issuing stock, filing financial reports and paying taxes. Other forms include partnerships and sole proprietorships. Are they less evil? You buy your groceries from corporations, your cars, newspapers, cellphones, clothing and exercise equipment. Your parents and children work for corporations. Are they evil?

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