Tax Quotes & Sayings

The tax code is now nine times longer than the Bible, and not nearly as interesting. — Rob Portman

no mathematical formula or econometric estimate can tell us exactly what tax rate ought to be applied to what level of income. Only collective deliberation and democratic experimentation can do that. — Thomas Piketty

The United States is absolutely ripe for a rise in gasoline taxes. The nominal gasoline excise tax rate has been fixed at 18.4 cents per gallon since 1994.29 Inflation alone has reduced the real value of that tax per gallon by around 30 percent. As with other federal tax rates, the U.S. excise tax rate on gasoline is extremely low by international comparison. We might conservatively assume that by 2015 an extra 0.5 percent of GDP could be collected by some combination of a higher gasoline excise tax and modest carbon levies on other fossil fuels (such as on coal at the utilities). Other — Jeffrey D. Sachs

Advertising is the tax you pay for being unremarkable. — Robert Stephens

Rick Perry unveiled his new tax plan. He says he wants a flat tax. He believes that tax should be flat, just like the earth. — Jay Leno

The Founding Fathers realized that "the power to tax is the power to destroy," which is why they did not give the Federal government the power to impose an income tax. Needless to say, the Founders would be horrified to know that Americans today give more than a third of their income to the Federal government. — Ron Paul

The rich control our politics to a huge extend. In return they get tax cuts and deregulation. It's been and is an amazing ride for the rich. — Jeffrey D. Sachs

In general, anyone who paid the long distance telephone tax will get the refund on their 2006 federal income tax return. This includes individuals, businesses and non-profit organizations. — Virgil Goode

What it 't to us, if taxes rise or fall,
Thanks to our fortune, we pay none at all.
Let muckworms who in dirty acres deal,
Lament those hardships which we cannot feel,
His grace who smarts, may bellow if he please,
But must I bellow too, who sit at ease?
By custom safe, the poets' numbers flow,
Free as the light and air some years ago.
No statesman e'er will find it worth his pains
To tax our labours, and excise our brains.
Burthens like these with earthly buildings bear,
No tributes laid on castles in the air. — Charles Churchill

Twenty-nine cents of every tax dollar collected is spent on law enforcement. Fifteen cents of every tax dollar collected is spent on sewage collection and treatment. Eight cents of every tax dollar collected is spent on road maintenance. One-point-five cents of every tax dollar collected is spent on education. — James Frey

It is one of the many ironies of this period that, at a time when the intelligentsia were excoriating Mellon for tax-evasion, and contrasting the smooth-running Soviet planned economy with the breakdown in America, he was secretly exploiting the frantic necessities of the Soviet leaders to form the basis of one of America's most splendid public collections — Paul Johnson

A tax-supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state. — Isabel Paterson

The more government takes in taxes, the less incentive people have to work. What coal miner or assembly-line worker jumps at the offer of overtime when he knows Uncle Sam is going to take sixty percent or more of his extra pay? ... Any system that penalizes success and accomplishment is wrong. Any system that discourages work, discourages productivity, discourages economic progress, is wrong. If, on the other hand, you reduce tax rates and allow people to spend or save more of what they earn, they'll be more industrious; they'll have more incentive to work hard, and money they earn will add fuel to the great economic machine that energizes our national progress. The result: more prosperity for all - and more revenue for government.4 — Donald J. Trump

We like democracy because why? The pathologies of the U.S. version are so obvious in the aftermath of the latest averted crisis that we need to ask ourselves whether it's worth it - and why electoral democracy hasn't self-destructed before. Should Tunisians or Egyptians opt for the Chinese model, where rational autocrats may restrict rights, but no one threatens to blow up world markets in the name of an 18th-century tax protest? — Noah Feldman

I'm still one who says that we can get rid of the Internal Revenue Service if we would pass the fair tax, which is a tax on consumption rather than a tax on people's income, and move power back where the founders believed it should have been all along. — Mike Huckabee

In six short years, small business owners and family farmers will once again be assessed a tax on the value of their property at the time of their death, despite having paid taxes throughout their lifetime. — Doc Hastings

There is no liberty without dependency. That is why we should celebrate tax day. — Cass Sunstein

If our children are healthy, they'll develop into their full potential and become wonderful tax-paying citizens sometime, — Steve Kagen

The artist is the lowest form of life on the rung of the ladder. The publishers are usually businessmen who deal with businessmen. They deal with promotional people. They deal with financial people. They deal with accountants. They deal with people who work on higher levels. They deal with tax people, but have absolutely no interest in artists, in individual artists, especially very young artists. — Jack Kirby

The law, right now, permits companies that close down American factories and offices and move those jobs overseas to take a tax deduction for the costs associated with moving the jobs to China or India or wherever. — Sheldon Whitehouse

When a thing is bought not for its use but for its costliness, cheapness is no recommendation. As Sismondi remarks, the consequence of cheapening articles of vanity, is not that less is expended on such things, but that the buyers substitute for the cheapened article some other which is more costly, or a more elaborate quality of the same thing; and as the inferior quality answered the purpose of vanity equally well when it was equally expensive, a tax on the article is really paid by nobody: it is a creation of public revenue by which nobody loses. — John Stuart Mill

Andrea Leadsom also denies any tax avoidance, says she 'shopped around' for a good deal and it was from a British bank that booked the biz in Jersey. — Laura Kuenssberg

Our climate leadership team has recommended it go up and I would say there's always going to be upward pressure to raise the carbon tax. Remember, we're already double what the only other province who has a carbon tax is at right now, Quebec - they peg it at about $15 a tonne. — Christy Clark

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. — Thomas Sowell

Look, this island is an attempt to re-create a natural environment from the past. To make an isolated world where extinct creatures roam freely. Correct?" "Yes." "But from my point of view, such an undertaking is impossible. The mathematics are so self-evident that they don't need to be calculated. It's rather like my asking you whether, on a billion dollars in income, you had to pay tax. You wouldn't need to pull out your calculator to check. You'd know tax was owed. And, similarly, I know overwhelmingly that one cannot successfully duplicate nature in this way, or hope to isolate it. — Michael Crichton

And I will repeat today what I have said throughout this campaign. I will not raise taxes on the middle class. I will give you tax relief to help ease these burdens. — Hillary Clinton

Friends persuaded me to run for the office, and I won. I had been warned, before taking office, that state politics lacks the glamour of its Washington counterpart; one labors largely in obscurity, mostly on topics that mean a great deal to some but that the average man or woman on the street can safely ignore (the regulation of mobile homes, say, or the tax consequences of farm equipment depreciation). Nonetheless, I found the work — Barack Obama

What I argue for is a progressive tax, a global tax, based on the taxation of private property. — Thomas Piketty

In the U.S. Senate, in the short term we need to reduce the tax burden on hard working individuals, families, and small businesses. — Joni Ernst

The tax laws are written by men with considerable net worth, and with little understanding of what wage-earners must do to make ends meet. — Martin L. Gross

Well the thinking is we have the highest tax rate in the world. In the entire world, we have the highest tax rate. There's gridlock in Washington because there's no leadership. So what I'm doing is a large tax cut especially for the middle class and they're gonna- we're going to have a dynamic country. We're going to have dynamic economics. And it's going to be something really special. And people are going back to work. — Donald Trump

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. — Andrew Mellon

I want to make it as hard as possible. Gun owners would have to be evaluated by how they scored on written and firing tests, and have to pass the tests in order to own a gun. And I would tax the guns, bullets and the license itself very heavily. — Joycelyn Elders

Of course, tax revenues have ended up being substantially higher than they were at the time these dire projections were made, and we are very close now to having a balanced budget. All that has been very helpful. — Charles Vest

A homeless man once told me that dancing to rap music is the cultural equivalent of masturbating, and I'd sort of fell the same way about playing John Madden Football immediately after filing my income tax: It's fun, but - somehow - vaguely pathetic. — Chuck Klosterman

In the first place, just as income tax returns allow us to study changes in income inequality, estate tax returns enable us to study changes in the inequality of wealth. — Thomas Piketty

If you are not drawing fire from both Pharisees and Sadducees, you are probably saying something other than what Jesus said. And if your message is not drawing both tax collectors (Roman collaborators) and zealots (anti-Roman insurrectionists) to repentance, you are probably speaking with a different voice than does he. Jesus wasn't inconsistent. He saw the Roman Empire, despite all its pretensions to preeminence both in its own mind and in the mind of its opponents, as a temporary obstacle, not the defining point of his agenda. We stand and we speak, with reconciliation in view. We see, therefore, even our most passionate critic not as an argument to be vaporized but as a neighbor to be evangelized. This doesn't mean that we back down one iota from the truth. But we proclaim the whole gospel of truth and grace, never backing down from either. That means taking seriously the arguments of our opponents, not merely caricatures of those arguments. — Russell D. Moore

Some of the worst abuses of government force in recent years were precipitated by technical and victimless gun-law violations. For example, the BATF claimed that the Branch Davidians possessed machine guns without paying the required federal tax and filling in the proper registration forms. So a tax case worth less than $10,000 led to a 76-man helicopter, machine gun, and grenade assault on a home in which 2/3 of the occupants were women and children. — Dave Kopel

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

The stimulus legislation, technically known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, was a mixture of tax cuts for families and businesses; increased transfer payments, like unemployment insurance; and increased direct government spending, like infrastructure investment. — Christina Romer

We need a tax code that promotes savings, investment, achievement, innovation, and hard work. — Erik Paulsen

tenure at Treasury was not as successful as his career at Alcoa. Almost immediately after taking office he began focusing on a couple of key issues, including worker safety, job creation, executive accountability, and fighting African poverty, among other initiatives. However, O'Neill's politics did not line up with those of President Bush, and he launched an internal fight opposing Bush's proposed tax cuts. He was asked to resign at the end of 2002. "What I thought was the right thing for economic policy was the opposite of what the White House wanted," O'Neill told me. "That's not good for a treasury secretary, so I got fired. — Charles Duhigg

There are people who enjoy the life in England but don't pay a penny in tax, whereas my footballers pay more than half their income in tax. — Gordon Taylor

The position is clear - there is no ambiguity in Sinn Fein's position. We, along with all the other parties, have signed up to a reduced rate of corporation tax of 12.5 % by 2018. — Martin McGuinness

The absence of life is not the same as material privation: we will never again see the same soul occupying the same space. The world refers to them as pets, but that is what we do, not really what they are. Affection pays for itself in proportion to the love we offer, and if the love we lavished on him was any indication, we are inconsolable. The suffering is more on our side now, for he led an enormously happy and productive life, and we are left to remember and agonize. It is all wretchedness now. Grief is the currency for death, leaving us in emotional debt perhaps forever, but love is the tax we happily pay toward the investment of another's company, and we would all rather pay it and be happy and poor than be rich in a friendless life. He is gone, and we are now beholden to him, but we are so much happier for his having been here than we deserve to be.
On the death of Ted, beloved cat — Michelle Franklin

When I write my annual tax column, some ex-IRS agent will complain, "There you go IRS bashing again." They're always saying that they're just doing their job. Someone I know once said, "You could get another job." — Dave Barry

I have asked the secretary of the treasury to report by April 1 on whether present tax laws may be stimulating in undue amounts the flow of American capital to the industrial countries abroad through special preferential treatment. — John F. Kennedy

I'm like tax. You're going to pay one way or the other. — Shaquille O'Neal

Putting a tax on carbon could be an effective approach for curbing global warming pollution. — Frances Beinecke

I've voted in some cases to remove and reduce tax breaks for the oil industry in other cases I've voted not to because I felt that the proposals covered too much. — Jeff Bingaman

You know who a complicated tax code kills? The guy or gal trying to start a business out of the spare bedroom of their home. So we've got to simplify our tax code. — Marco Rubio

The NRA was one of the items that we pointed to when we added money to the labor, health and Education appropriations bill by reducing the size of the tax cut. — Dave Obey

Tax credits do not help people get better jobs; in fact, they can create poverty traps that actually disincentivise people from working more hours or finding a better paid job. — Theresa May

In New York, the average total state and local tax burden is $5,260 for every man, woman and child. That's by far the highest in the country. — Tom Golisano

I mean I get loads of money, all from different sources. You give it to your accountant. They manage it. But you pay corporation tax. If you're then taking it out and spending it on yourself, you have to pay more. — Ken Livingstone

Politics is the enemy of a sound economic entity, he mused. New laws, harsher tax rates, meddling . . . and now this. — Philip K. Dick

Make no mistake, tax cheaters cheat us all, and the IRS should enforce our laws to the letter. — Tom Daschle

Mr. Speaker, in 1848, Karl Marx said, a progressive income tax is needed to transfer wealth and power to the state. Thus, Marx's Communist Manifesto had as its major economic tenet a progressive income tax. Think about it, 1848 Karl Marx, Communism ... I say it is time to replace the progressive income tax with a national retail sales tax, and it is time to abolish the IRS, my colleagues. I yield back all the rules, regulations, fear, and intimidation of our current system. — James Traficant

Income tax rules also made borrowing against a home's equity attractive. Because mortgage interest payments can be deducted for income tax purposes, the interest paid on home equity loans could also be deducted, although interest on credit card debt or other debt was not deductible. Therefore it often paid anyone with any other kind of debt to pay off that debt with a home equity loan, whose interest would be deductible for income tax purposes. More and more people began to do this during the housing boom. In 2003, home equity loans totaled $593 billion. Such loans soared during the housing boom, nearly doubling to $1.13 trillion in 2007. — Thomas Sowell

The gasoline tax is a user fee, but it does not fill enough of the need, and you want cars to be more efficient. — Kevin McCarthy

Any man of energy and initiative can get what he wants out of life. But when initiative is crippled by legislation or by a tax system which denies him the right to receive a reasonable share of his earnings, then he will no longer exert himself and the country will be deprived of the energy on which its continued greatness depends. — Andrew Mellon

The underlying intellectual argument for seeking to tax economic rents retains its force. — Mervyn King

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

Americans spend 3 billion hours per year filling out tax forms and keeping tax records. — Jim Ramstad

I will never support any tax increase on middle-income earners, ever ... If you're not going to eliminate loopholes and exemptions, then I wouldn't support lowering rates. — Adam Hasner

Scratch the surface at conservative think tanks and universities that house free-market economists, and it's not hard to find proponents of a carbon tax. — Nina Easton

From a Canadian partisan perspective, the more we can upgrade bitumen in Canada, the more we can create jobs in value added, in tax revenues for all Canadians. — N. Murray Edwards

The latest Congressional Budget Office figures show that the top 1 percent of income earners in the United States paid 39 percent of federal income taxes while earning 18 percent of pretax income and the top 5 percent of income earners paid 61 percent of federal income taxes while earning 31 percent of pretax income. Indeed, the top 40 percent of income earners paid 99.4 percent of federal income taxes. The bottom 40 percent of income earners paid no federal income tax and received 3.8 percent from the tax system. And the middle 20 percent of income earners pay only 4.4 percent of federal income taxes.3 — Mark R. Levin

We talked about many issues, like welfare, is it the way of life or hand up? Talked about size of government, how much should it tax families and small businesses? And when we left that lunch, we got in the car and I looked over at Chuck and said, 'I'll be damned. we're Republicans.' — Susana Martinez

A tax dollar paid today is far more expensive than one paid in future dollars. With inflation, money becomes less valuable over time because of the cost of goods increases. — Coreen T. Sol

I always heard criticism is the tax on fame. They were right. And then some. — Brad Pitt

In 2001, Republicans used reconciliation to pass President Bush's $1.35 trillion tax cut that mainly benefited the wealthy. — Bernie Sanders

The time will come, and probably during 2009, that the only way the U.S. will be able to fund its deficits is to create money by printing it. The Treasury will have to sell bonds, and, in the absence of foreign buyers, the Fed will have to print the money to buy them. The consequence will be runaway inflation, increasing interest rates, recession, and inevitable tax increases on all Americans. — Doug Casey

The president wants more tax money in Washington. I want more money left in the communities, particularly poor communities, particularly communities that have high unemployment. — Rand Paul

Let's abolish the IRS, let's eliminate income tax, let's eliminate corporate tax, let's balance the federal budget, and if we need a tax, it can be one federal consumption tax. — Gary Johnson

You walk into any supermarket or any shopping mall and ask the public what they are worried about. Not one of them will tell you they are worried about 12 years of Mitt Romney's tax returns. — John Sununu

Let me respond with a few points, the first being that all immigrants pay taxes, income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, gasoline taxes, cigarette taxes, every tax when they make a purchase. — Luis Gutierrez

It is easy to talk about tax simplification, and we all know it is very difficult to accomplish; but for the last three Congresses, I have offered a tax simplification bill that would include a paid-for repeal of alternative minimum tax. — Richard Neal

As secretary, Mellon was a pioneer of supply-side economics, cutting tax rates in order to spur investment and economic — Jeff Miller

Near-term deficits are temporary and manageable if - and only if - we keep spending in check, the tax burden low and the economy growing. — Jim Nussle

The arithmetic makes it plain that inflation is a far more devastating tax than anything that has been enacted by our legislature. The inflation tax has a fantastic ability to simply consume capital. It makes no difference to a widow with her saving in a 5 percent passbook account whether she pays 100 percent income tax on her interest income during a period of zero inflation, or pays no income taxes during years of 5 percent inflation. Either way, she is 'taxed' in a manner that leave her no real income whatsoever. Any money she spends comes right out of capital. She would find outrageous a 120 percent income tax, but doesn't seem to notice that 5 percent inflation is the economic equivalent. — Warren Buffett

We tax air passengers like cigarettes and alcohol - we impose sin taxes on travellers. — Gordon Bethune

Republicans are not going to play I-told-you-so, but it is pretty obvious that the tax reductions passed in 2003 helped Americans dig out of a recession and get back to work. — Marsha Blackburn

If the present tax rates had been in effect from the beginning of our century, many who are millionaires today would live under more modest circumstances. But all those new branches of industry which supply the masses with articles unheard of before, would operate, if at all, on a much smaller scale, and their products would be beyond the reach of the common man. — Ludwig Von Mises

Tax bills create wealth. They help people live better. — Nancy Johnson

If I tax them, in fact, I'm not taxing the capitalists, I am taxing the people who have saved, trusted. It was very controversial, those sorts of things. But finally, it worked out. — Shimon Peres

I wish more people knew that the only one of the three main parties where not a single MP flipped from one property to the next, and not a single MP avoided capital-gains tax, where every single London MP did not claim a penny of second-home allowance, was the Liberal Democrats. — Nick Clegg

All Democrats for the last 30 years have tried to stimulate the economy by giving 'tax cuts' to people who don't pay taxes. — Ann Coulter

My net worth is the market value of holdings less the tax payable upon sale. The liability is just as real as the asset unless the value of the asset declines (ouch), the asset is given away (no comment), or I die with it. The latter course of action would appear to at least border on a Pyrrhic victory. — Warren Buffett

The only thing that was economic, I might say, about my music career, aside from the fact that I did everybody's tax returns in the band, was the decision I made to leave the music business on economic grounds. — Alan Greenspan

I think we should have a very, very heavy tax on handguns and on bullets. — Joycelyn Elders

Taxing Women is a must-have primer for any woman who wants to understand how our current tax system affects her family's economic condition. In plain English, McCaffery explains how the tax code stacks the deck against women and why it's in women's economic interest to lead the next great tax rebellion. — Patricia Schroeder

The key players are now all in place in Washington and in state governments across America to officially label carbon dioxide as a pollutant and enact laws that tax us citizens for our carbon footprints. — John Coleman

Stay keeping my cup full so I'm extra charged like a state tax. — Drake

I'm conscious of competitive issues, but at the same time the recommendation they make is that we protect citizens by not adding to the overall tax burden of the province. — Christy Clark

Rich people are so eccentric, and I don't think people really realize. Especially by the turn of the century, they were living like rappers, and there was no income tax. They are some of the most fascinating people, and I am endlessly fascinated. — Riki Lindhome

Time, which shows so vacant, indivisible, and divine in its coming, is slit and peddled into trifles and tatters. A door is to bepainted, a lock to be repaired. I want wood, or oil, or meal, or salt; the house smokes, or I have a headache; then the tax; and an affair to be transacted with a man without heart or brains; and the stinging recollection of an injurious or very awkward word,
these eat up the hours. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

If the property belongs to God he is able to pay the tax. — Robert Green Ingersoll

I've never fully understood how Christianity became quite so tame and respectable, given its origins among drunkards, prostitutes, and tax collectors. — Nadia Bolz-Weber

You're not getting this back you know. Consider it an asshole tax. — Chuck Palahniuk