A Marginal Tax Quotes & Sayings

As income taxes and capital-gains taxes were reduced in the United States beginning in the 1980s, the share of federal taxes paid by "the rich" steadily went up. From 1980 to 2010, as the top 1 percent increased their share of before-tax income from 9 percent to 15 percent, their share of the individual income tax soared from 17 percent to 39 percent of the total paid. Their share of total federal taxes more than doubled during a period when the highest marginal tax rate was cut in half, from 70 percent to 35.5 percent. The wealthy, in short, are already paying more than their fair share of taxes, and the growth in their wealth and incomes has had nothing to do with tax avoidance or deflecting the tax burden to the middle class. — James Piereson

Well, I think the reality is that as you study - when President Kennedy cut marginal tax rates, when Ronald Reagan cut marginal tax rates, when President Bush imposed those tax cuts, they actually generated economic growth. They expanded the economy. They expand tax revenues. — Mike Pence

Humans construct moral communities out of shared norms, institutions, and gods that, even in the twenty-first century, they fight, kill, and die to defend. — Jonathan Haidt

What makes Christians different from everyone else is that God Himself lives within them by His Holy Spirit. When we come to Christ and give our lives to Him, God actually takes up residence within us. — Billy Graham

Hard work. Well, that=s all right for people who don=t know how to do anything else. It=s all right for people who aren=t lucky. But once you==re lucky, you don=t have to work for other people. You make them work for you. — Dan Totheroh

Being truthful is a necessity because when I'm not being truthful it takes a toll on me. I don't have any room for it in my life. I don't have an across-the-board opinion on honesty in relationships. But for me, personally, it's paramount. — Dax Shepard

Regressives say small businesses would be hurt by a higher marginal tax. Don't believe this, either. Only just over 1 percent of small-business owners earn enough to be taxed at the top rate - and that's just on the portion of their incomes exceeding $379,000. The — Robert B. Reich

The Senate needs to leave enough money in the proposed budget to not only reduce all marginal rates, but to eliminate the death tax, so that people who build up assets are able to transfer them from one generation to the next, regardless of a person's race. — George W. Bush

To suppose that the value of a common stock is determined purely by a corporation's earnings discounted by the relevant interest rates and adjusted for the marginal tax rate is to forget that people have burned witches, gone to war on a whim, risen to the defense of Joseph Stalin and believed Orson Welles when he told them over the radio that the Martians had landed. — James Grant

Marginal tax rates are the lowest they've been in generations, and all we can talk about is tax cuts. — Patrick McHenry

Dropkick Murphys get me going, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nirvana ... plus, all the regular hip-hop stuff. — Kobe Bryant

I do think there is room at the very top for marginal tax changes. — Richard Hanna

Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon lent their support to such interventionist measures as Medicare and the Environmental Protection Agency. Eisenhower pushed for the greatest public works project in the history of the United States - the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act, which linked the nation together with four-lane (and occasionally six-lane) interstate highways covering forty thousand miles. The GOP also backed large expansion of federally supported higher education. And to many Republicans at the time, a marginal income tax rate of more than 70 percent on top incomes was not repugnant. — Robert B. Reich

Whatever anyone does or says, I must be emerald and keep my colour. — Marcus Aurelius

There's a grosser irony about Politically Correct English. This is that PCE purports to be the dialect of progressive reform but is in fact
in its Orwellian substitution of the euphemisms of social equality for social equality itself
of vastly more help to conservatives and the US status quo than traditional SNOOT prescriptions ever were. Were I, for instance, a political conservative who opposed using taxation as a means of redistributing national wealth, I would be delighted to watch PC progressives spend their time and energy arguing over whether a poor person should be described as "low-income" or "economically disadvantaged" or "pre-prosperous" rather than constructing effective public arguments for redistributive legislation or higher marginal tax rates. [ ... ] In other words, PCE acts as a form of censorship, and censorship always serves the status quo. — David Foster Wallace

Unfortunately, there is not a book in the Bible called First and Second Executive or Letter to the Christian Plumbers. Instead, — William, Executive Editor Messenger

it was better to be a quiet surprise than a loud letdown. — Tracy Ewens

What Governor Romney is proposing is an across-the-board cut in marginal tax rates for households, every household in America by 20 percent. And we'll have to broaden the base to pay for that. Also, a very deep cut in the corporate rate. — Glenn Hubbard

During the twentieth century, however, the size, scope, and power of government exploded. Total government spending increased from 6.73 percent of GDP in 1906 to 37.79 percent of GDP in 2014.[2] The dollar has lost more than 95 percent of its value due to the inflationary policies of the Federal Reserve. Top marginal income tax rates have been as high as 94 percent. Entitlement programs now constitute more than 60 percent of the federal budget. And businesses are hog-tied by more than 175,000 pages of red tape in the Code of Federal Regulations. What — Michael Dahlen

... economists recognize that, other things equal, cuts in tax rates reduce tax revenues in percentage terms by less than the tax-rate reductions. Similarly, tax-rate increases do not raise tax revenues by as much in percentage terms as the tax-rate increases. This is true because changes in marginal tax rates alter taxpayer behavior and thus affect taxable income. — Campbell R. McConnell

More and more political analysts and weak-kneed politicians are advising the historically pro-life Republican Party to abandon its pro-life stance for political gain. My first response is that if you cannot trust a party on the value of defending human life, how can you trust it on issues like marginal tax rates? — Gary Bauer

I think, in effect, in most of the European countries, the total marginal tax rate is over 50 percent; that's to say, add on other taxes like VAT to the income tax. — James Mirrlees

He leaned back for a moment to tug her shirt down her arms, with the same wicked, lovley smile that had first stolen her breath years ago. — Melissa Marr

I see lots of cycles, for sure. There's the whole post-Star Wars era, but I don't think it's the whole story. — Rob Morrow

I can't imagine an argument that says that raising marginal tax rates on high income people, many of whom are business owners, is a recipe for economic growth. — Glenn Hubbard

From World War II until 1981 the top marginal income tax rate never fell below 70 percent. Under President Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican whom no one ever accused of being a socialist, the top rate was 91 percent. Even after all deductions and credits, Americans with incomes of over $1 million (in today's dollars) paid a top marginal rate, on average, of 52 percent. As recently as the late 1980s, the top tax rate on capital gains was 35 percent. But as income and wealth have accumulated at the top, so has the political power to reduce taxes. The Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, which were extended for two years in December 2010, capped top rates at 35 percent, their lowest level in more than half a century, and reduced capital gains taxes to 15 percent. — Robert B. Reich

Barack Obama is not Harry Truman, who dropped the A-bomb on Japan to stop World War II. Barack Obama is not John F. Kennedy, who lowered marginal tax rates to get economic growth and job creation. Barack Obama and the far left, they are a completely different ball of wax. — Monica Crowley

the decrease in the top marginal income tax rate led to an explosion of very high incomes, which then increased the political influence of the beneficiaries of the change in the tax laws, who had an interest in keeping top tax rates low or even decreasing them further and who could use their windfall to finance political parties, pressure groups, and think tanks. — Thomas Piketty

Anyone who takes the time to listen is either an old soul or a romantic one. — Richelle E. Goodrich

The most overwhelming proof that tax incentives have a relatively minor effect on individual charity is the tremendous consistency over time of giving as a percentage of income. Although the tax code has changed frequently and dramatically over the past twenty-three years, giving as a share of personal income has hovered around 1.83 percent. This measure reached as high as 1.95 percent in 1989 and as low as 1.71 percent in 1985. The narrow range has persisted even though the top marginal tax rate has fluctuated in that period from between 28 and 70 percent. — John S. Barry

Tax rates for the wealthy should revert to Clinton-era levels, both because it is necessary for long-term deficit reduction and because fairness dictates it. Moreover, there is no proof that higher marginal rates dissuade investment, all the rhetoric from the Right notwithstanding. — Eliot Spitzer

In contrast to what many people in Britain and the United States believe, the true figures on growth (as best one can judge from official national accounts data) show that Britain and the United States have not grown any more rapidly since 1980 than Germany, France, Japan, Denmark, or Sweden. In other words, the reduction of top marginal income tax rates and the rise of top incomes do not seem to have stimulated productivity (contrary to the predictions of supply-side theory) or at any rate did not stimulate productivity enough to be statistically detectable at the macro level. — Thomas Piketty

Like the devout theologian seeing the Devil lurking everywhere, Menninger, the devout Freudian, sees aggression. — Thomas Szasz