#Taxes Quotes

“The goof man, in dealing with his people, taxes them with luxury.”

“If you tax too high, the revenue will yield nothing.”

“There is nothing government can give you that it hasn't taken from you in the first place.”

“There is not a man in the country that can't make a living for himself and family. But he can't make a living for them and his government, too, the way his government is living. What the government has got to do is live as cheap as the people”

“They have passed the big inheritance tax, and that gets you when you are gone. You used to could die and be able to beat taxes, but not now. The undertaker don't go over your body as carefully as the assessor does your accumilated assets, and he gets his before the undertaker. They have it on these big fortunes now where they pay as high as 60 to 70 percent of what they leave. That's mighty expensive dying when it runs into money like that, and you won't see 'em dropping off as casually as they have been.”

“If you make any money, the government shoves you in the creek once a year with it in your pockets, and all that don't get wet you can keep.”

“Land taxes is the thing. They got so high that there is no chance to make anything. Not only land but all property tax. You see in the old days, why the only thing they knew how to tax was land, or a house. Well, that condition went along for quite awhile, so even today the whole country tries to run its revenue on taxes on land. They never ask if the land makes anything. "It's land ain't it? Well tax it then."”

“It's a good thing we don't get all the government we pay for.”

“The whole trouble with the Republicans is their fear of an increase in income tax, especially on higher incomes. They speak of it almost like a national calamity. I really believe if it come to a vote whether to go to war with England, France and Germany combined, or raise the rate on incomes of over $100,000, they would vote war.”

“Would your reply possibly be this? Well, it all depends on what my tax rate will be on the gain you're saying we're going to make. If the taxes are too high, I would rather leave the money in my savings account, earning a quarter of 1 percent. Only in Grover Norquist's imagination does such a response exist.”

“The crime of taxation is not in the taking it, it's in the way that it's spent.”

“Our financial ills will never be settled till you fix it so every man will pay an income tax on what he earns, be it a farm, grocery store or municipal or government bonds.”

“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.”

“The woman that comes in, takes the wastebasket away, she's paying 15.3 or whatever it is on payroll tax alone. I mean it is - I never had it so good.”

“I prefer liquor store robbers with hungry kids to companies that locate offshore to avoid U.S. taxes.”

“There is some talk of lowering (the income tax), and they will have to. People are not making enough to pay it.”

“The taxpayers are sending congressmen on expensive trips abroad. It might be worth it except they keep coming back”

“The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets.”

“My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress.”

“If you look at the Forbes 400, they are paying a lower rate, accounting payroll taxes, than their secretary or - whomever around their office.”

“I'll bring my tax returns; you bring yours. I'll meet you anytime anywhere.”

“I think the rest of the country should be paying less, the 95 percent that [Barack] Obama talks about or maybe even a little higher than that.”

“OUR leaders have asked for “shared sacrifice.” But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched.”

“The income tax was devised to give lawyers and certified public accountants business. Few persons can make head, tail, or middle out of it. Einstein admitted he couldn't.”

“Here is my best advice on the matter of deductibles: just count off on your fingers all the items that you suspect might be deductible - and then forget them, because they aren't.”

“I could juggle anything in my day. Balls, cigar boxes, knives...But there was one thing I could never juggle. My income tax.”

“Taxes should be proportioned to what may be annually spared by the individual.”

“It is a general idea, that when taxes are once laid on, they are never taken off.”

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

“Being willing to donate the taxpayers' money is not the same as being willing to put your own money where your mouth is.”

“Someone once said that taxes are the price we pay for civilization. That may have been true when he said it, but today taxes are mostly the price we pay so that politicians can play Santa Claus and get reelected.”

“More than half of all people filing income tax forms use someone else to prepare the forms for them. Then they have to sign under penalty of perjury that these forms are correct. But if they were competent to determine that, why would they have to pay someone else to do their taxes for them in the first place?”

“The real goal should be reduced government spending, rather than balanced budgets achieved by ever rising tax rates to cover ever rising spending.”

“All the political angst and moral melodrama about getting 'the rich' to pay 'their fair share' is part of a big charade. This is not about economics, it is about politics.”

“In politics, throwing the taxpayers' money at disasters is supposed to show your compassion. But robbing Peter to pay Paul is not compassion. It is politics.”

“It can only be by blinding the understanding of man, and making him believe that government is some wonderful mysterious thing, that excessive revenues are obtained. Monarchy is well calculated to ensure this end. It is the popery of government; a thing kept up to amuse the ignorant, and quiet them into taxes.”

“Government ought to be as much open to improvement as anything which appertains to man, instead of which it has been monopolized from age to age, by the most ignorant and vicious of the human race. Need we any other proof of their wretched management, than the excess of debts and taxes with which every nation groans, and the quarrels into which they have precipitated the world?"”

“To say that any people are not fit for freedom, is to make poverty their choice, and to say they had rather be loaded with taxes than not.”

“Every proprietor owes to the community a ground-rent for the land which he holds.”

“The continual whine of lamenting the burden of taxes, however successfully it may be practiced in mixed governments, is inconsistent with the sense and spirit of a republic. If taxes are necessary, they are of course advantageous, but if they require an apology, the apology itself implies an impeachment. Why, then, is man imposed upon, or why does he impose upon himself?”

“Most of the people in the upper income brackets are not rich and do not have wealth sheltered offshore. They are typically working people who have finally reached their peak earning years after many years of far more modest incomes-and now see much of what they have worked for siphoned off by politicians, to the accompaniment of lofty rhetoric.”

“What do you call it when someone steals someone else's money secretly? Theft. What do you call it when someone takes someone else's money openly by force? Robbery. What do you call it when a politician takes someone else's money in taxes and gives it to someone who is more likely to vote for him? Social Justice.”

“Elections should be held on April 16th- the day after we pay our income taxes. That is one of the few things that might discourage politicians from being big spenders.”

“Another way of verbally masking elite preemption of other people's decisions is to use the word 'ask'-as in 'We are just asking everyone to pay their fair share.' But of course governments do not ask, they: tell. The Internal Revenue Service does not 'ask' for contributions. It takes.”

“If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else's expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves”

“As taxpayers, we have quietly accepted the fact that our taxes will be spent to pay big bucks for all sorts of ugly, twisted metal to be displayed in front of or inside government buildings, in the name of 'art' that was obviously never meant to give the public any enjoyment and often represented a thumbing of the artist's nose at the public.”

“There is nothing that politicians like better than handing out benefits to be paid for by someone else.”

“The most politically painless way to hand out goodies, without taking responsibility for their costs, is to pass a law saying that somebody else must provide those goodies at their expense, while the politicians take credit for generosity and compassion.”

“It is a way to take people's wealth from them without having to openly raise taxes. Inflation is the most universal tax of all.”

“People who thing that they are getting something for nothing, by having government provide what they would otherwise have to buy in the private market, are not only kidding themselves by ignoring the taxes that government has to take from them in order to give them the appearance of something for nothing.”