quotations about taxes
We've got a tax code that is encouraging flight of jobs and outsourcing. And that's why we've specifically recommended ... that Congress change our tax code so that we stop giving tax breaks to companies that are moving to Mexico and China and other places, and start putting those tax breaks into companies that are investing here in the United States.
BARACK OBAMA
debate, October 12, 2004
All taxes are disliked, and the more directly they are imposed, the more hateful they become.
WILLIAM WATERSTON
A Cyclopedia of Commerce
The rope by which the great blocks of taxes are attached to any citizenry is simple loyalty--loyalty to King, to country, to government.
STEPHEN KING
The Eyes of the Dragon
Once you realize that trickle-down economics does not work, you will see the excessive tax cuts for the rich as what they are -- a simple upward redistribution of income, rather than a way to make all of us richer, as we were told.
HA-JOON CHANG
23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism
He's spending a year dead for tax reasons.
DOUGLAS ADAMS
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Taxes are how we pool our money for public health and safety, infrastructure, research, and services--from the development of vaccines and the Internet to public schools and universities, transportation, courts, police, parks, and safe drinking water.
HOLLY SKLAR
Common Dreams, April 17, 2006
The First Rule of Practicing Tax Law: If someone has to go to jail, make sure it's the client.
FRED DRASNER
attributed, Contemporary Tax Practice
Why does a slight tax increase cost you two hundred dollars and a substantial tax cut save you thirty cents?
PEG BRACKEN
attributed, Calling It a Day
Taxes are like a double chain which by keeping the peasants in the commune where they were born, fixes them still to the soil; though they are no longer, by law, attached to their master, they are always, by law, attached to each other.
JOSEPH WILBOIS
Russia and Reunion
All unpaid taxes are like invisible weights drowning the state in debt and threatening taxpayers with program and service cuts.
BOB FREEMAN
"Pennsylvania puts out list of tax delinquents owing a combined total of $1.2 billion", The Morning Call, May 6, 2017
The U.S. tax code often seems to be at war with the taxpayers. The tax law has become so stuffed with obscure provisions that were important to some group or other at some point in time that the mess just becomes too difficult for anybody to understand or to manage. The resulting complexity -- made worse by the so?called anti-complexity clause that Congress threw into the stew some years back -- has reached absurd dimensions.
T. R. REID
"Why we need to rewrite our tax code from scratch", PBS, April 17, 2017
It is a general idea, that when taxes are once laid on, they are never taken off.
THOMAS PAINE
Rights of Man
If a government is to be prudent its taxes must produce ample revenues without discouraging enterprise; and if it is to be just it must distribute the burden of taxes equitably.
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
Message to Congress on Tax Revision, Jun. 19, 1935
Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today.
HERMAN WOUK
attributed, African Legend: The Incredible Story of Francis Arthur Nzeribe
America is a land of taxation that was founded to avoid taxation.
LAURENCE J. PETER
Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Time
America does not have a money problem--it has a priorities problem.... We give tax cuts to the wealthy, and budget cuts to the poor.
TODD HUFFMAN
Common Dreams
At tax time, it helps to remember that if your tax obligation has increased from the previous year, it's usually because you're enjoying more income. That's a situation to which most of us aspire. Higher taxes are a price that we pay for greater success.
RICHARD CARLSON
The Don't Sweat Guide to Taxes
Just a reminder to every businessman in America. Taxation is paying your dues, paying your membership fee in America. If you join a country club or a community center, you pay fees. Why? You did not build the swimming pool, you have to maintain it. You did not build the basketball court. Someone has to clean it. You may not use the squash court, but you still have to pay your dues. Otherwise it won't be maintained and will fall apart, reducing the value of your membership.
PAMELA BOYD
"Taxes are like US membership fees", Missoulian, May 31, 2017
Note, besides, that it is no more immoral to directly rob citizens than to slip indirect taxes into the price of goods that they cannot do without.
ALBERT CAMUS
Caligula
I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible.
MILTON FRIEDMAN
attributed, Democrats and Republicans: Rhetoric and Reality