Tax Benefits Quotes & Sayings

University of California professor Emmanuel Saez, Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics, and Stefanie Stantcheva of the MIT Department of Economics, carefully taking into account the incentive effects of higher taxation and the societal benefits of reducing inequality, have estimated that the tax rate at the top should be around 70 percent - what it was before President Reagan started his campaign for the rich.68 But — Joseph E. Stiglitz

We have to adjust the age retirement for younger people. People of my income level are going to have to have their benefits means-tested. Democrats are going to want a simpler tax code. — Lindsey Graham

Ontario's gas tax rebates and infrastructure programs help create sustainable transit to improve quality of life for Ottawa residents with significant environmental benefits. — Bob Chiarelli

The alternative minimum tax was designed to prevent the very wealthiest Americans from overusing certain tax benefits to avoid most of their tax burden. — Richard Neal

If you don't try to generate more revenues through tax reform, if you don't ask, you know, the most fortunate Americans to bear a slightly larger burden of the privilege of being an American, then you have to - the only way to achieve fiscal sustainability is through unacceptably deep cuts in benefits for middle class seniors, or unacceptably deep cuts in national security. — Timothy Geithner

Free education, almost free healthcare, a generous benefits system and a better state pension than elsewhere, guarantee equal opportunities for all citizens. The only problem is that all these require a considerable amount of public revenue. This is why the common assertion that to be born in Finland is like winning the jackpot in the lottery is only applicable when you are at the receiving end. A far more common experience is that you need to win the lottery just to cover the tax bill. — Tarja Moles

Unlike most government programs, Social Security and, in part, Medicare are funded by payroll taxes dedicated specifically to them. Some of the tax revenue pays for current benefits; anything that's left over goes into trust funds for the future. The programs were designed this way for political reasons. — James Surowiecki

In these times of the 'Great Recession', we shouldn't be trying to shift the benefits of wealth behind some curtain. We should be celebrating and encouraging people to make as much money as they can. Profits equal tax money. While some people might find it distasteful to pay taxes, I don't. I find it patriotic. — Mark Cuban

The Republican tax cut threatens to undercut both veterans health care and the veterans educational benefits that have been recognized for decades as not only the long-standing obligation of the Nation to its veterans, but also as the best recruiting incentives we can offer to keep our armed forces strong and sharp. — Lane Evans

How can we share the gifts of nature? By sharing the monetary value that human beings assign to nature. The fundamental thing we need to abolish is the mechanism by which people unfairly profit from land. The solution is simple: Property owners merely need to pay the communities from which they receive benefits through their exclusive use of land the exact market value of the benefits they receive.

When land users pay significant proportions of the rental value of land to their local communities, they rightfully reimburse their communities. These can be called Community Land Contributions.

Unlike, land value taxes, CLCs relate to the rental value (which subsumes all natural and social benefits) not land price. Also, a tax implies land users are being taxed on their land values while CLCs emphasize that land is a community good. — Martin Adams

They're not a question of additional benefits. I mean, they touch every aspect of life. Your partner is sick. Social Security. I mean, it's pervasive. It's not as though, well, there's this little Federal sphere and it's only a tax question. It's as Justice Kennedy said, 1100 statutes, and it affects every area of life. And so he was really diminishing what the State has said is marriage. You're saying, no, State said two kinds of marriage; the full marriage, and then this sort of skim milk marriage. — Ruth Bader Ginsburg

If gay Americans are not allowed to get married and have all the benefits that American citizens are entitled to by the Bill of Rights, they should get one hell of a tax break. That is my opinion. — Jeanne Phillips

Instead of following through on their promise to concentrate on jobs, Republicans have attacked seniors, working families, women, and the most vulnerable among us. They have pursued an extreme agenda that would end Medicare as we know it and cut Social Security benefits in order to continue giving tax breaks to Big Oil and millionaires. — Dina Titus

Henceforth, federal, state, and local governments shall make no law nor establish any program that transfers general tax revenues to some citizens and not to others, whether those transfers consist of money or in-kind benefits. All programs currently providing such benefits are to be terminated. The funds formerly allocated to them are to be used instead to provide every citizen with a Universal Basic Income beginning at age twenty-one and continuing until death. The maximum annual value of the grant at the program's outset is to be $13,000, of which $3,000 must be devoted to catastrophic health insurance. — Charles Murray

Germany, I think, was first to substitute a Social Security program for its elderly based on this premise, that is, that we would tax workers to pay retirement benefits for those retired. — John Shadegg

We simply cannot continue to live with a [tax] system which has so many inequities. It must be changed in such a way that each of us pays a fair share of the burden. It has been said that one man's loophole is another man's livelihood. Even if this is true, it certainly is not fair, because the loophole-livelihood of those who are reaping undeserved benefits can be the economic noose of those who are paying more than they should. — Millicent Fenwick

A tax loophole is something that benefits the other guy. If it benefits you, it is tax reform. — Russell B. Long

The middle classes shouldn't be getting tax cuts, while those in tough, poorly paid jobs, who are already running out of money at the start of the month, are getting their benefits cut. That's not one-nation conservatism; it's two nations conservatism. — Tim Montgomerie

Because tax cuts create an incentive to increase output, employment, and production, they also help balance the budget by reducing means-tested government expenditures. A faster-growing economy means lower unemployment and higher incomes, resulting in reduced unemployment benefits and other social welfare programs. — Arthur Laffer

Tax expenditures for middle- and working-class Americans - like the earned income tax credit - aren't thought of as loopholes; they're just thought of as benefits. — Alex Pareene

I'm being told it saves money to shoot in Toronto, because of tax benefits, the crews are cheaper, but what I save in the bottom line, I lose in a million other ways. — Griffin Dunne

The law isn't that simple, and the practical damage will be great. State pensions are underfunded by $111 billion - a 500% increase from 1995 and up 75% in the past five years. About one in four state tax dollars already finances pensions, which is more than Illinois spends on education. Yet the court accuses politicians of shortchanging pensions. Politicians are to blame for the state's fiscal woes, but mainly because they colluded with unions to promise unsustainable benefits in return for political support. Less than 40% of the increase in the state's unfunded liability since 1995 is due to inadequate payments. The rest is due mainly to benefit growth and faulty actuarial assumptions such as investment rate of return. The 2013 reforms at issue capped salaries of — Anonymous

In certain states, if a woman makes $12,000 a year, and lives with her quarter-of-a million dollar boyfriend and they don't get married, as long as they don't get married, she gets maybe 20 or 30 thousand dollars in pre-tax benefits in terms of food stamps, health care and housing allowance. — Foster Friess

More retirees, longer life expectancy, larger benefits, and fewer workers - these trends have meant substantial increases in the payroll tax. Since the social security program began, the payroll tax has increased more than 500 percent. — Alex Tabarrok

countries allow organizations to claim some aspects of software development as R&D and thereby receive tax benefits for doing so. — Scott W. Ambler

Tariffs, government contracts, naval and military spending, nationalized industries, tax policy, social welfare, the legal privileging of labor unions were among the means at the disposal of the governing class to exploit the public at large for the benefits of its various clienteles. — Ralph Raico

How skillful to tax the middle class to pay for the relief of the poor, building resentment on top of humiliation! How adroit to bus poor black youngsters into poor white neighborhoods, in a violent exchange of impoverished schools, while the schools of the rich remain untouched and the wealth of the nation, doled out carefully where children need free milk, is drained for billion-dollar aircraft carriers. How ingenious to meet the demands of blacks and women for equality by giving them small special benefits, and setting them in competition with everyone else for jobs made scares by an irrational, wasteful system. How wise to turn the fear and anger of the majority toward a class of criminals bred - by economic inequity - faster than they can be put away, deflecting attention from the huge thefts of national resources carried out within the law by men in executive offices. — Howard Zinn

The more the state gives to its citizens, the less they have to earn. That is the basic concept of the welfare state - you receive almost everything you need without having to earn any of it. About half of Americans now pay no federal income tax - but they receive all government benefits just as if they had paid for, i.e., earned them. — Dennis Prager

The biggest and most deadly 'tax' rate on the poor comes from a loss of various welfare state benefits - food stamps, housing subsidies and the like - if their income goes up. — Thomas Sowell

People don't seem to make the connection between their tax money and the benefits that they get from their tax money, like free education, and the fire department, and police protection, and everything else. It drives me bonkers, because it's pretty straightforward to me. — Michael Schur

Economists agree that all taxes potentially detract from the ability of markets to allocate resources efficiently, and the least inefficient types of taxation are those that are simple, uniform, and predictable, which allow businesses to plan and invest around them. The U.S. tax code is exactly the opposite. While nominal corporate tax rates in the United States are much higher than in other developed countries, very few American corporations actually pay taxes at that rate, because they have negotiated special exemptions and benefits for themselves. — Francis Fukuyama

In the next 25 years, we will see a 100 percent increase in the number of American retirees. The number of workers, however, will increase by only 15 percent. Given those numbers, how can these programs survive? Under our current tax code, these programs can be maintained only by increasing the tax on those who work, reducing benefits for those who have retired or by increasing the age of retirement. — John Linder

The casinos brought lots of revenue and jobs to our community. We've seen lots of benefits from those tax dollars. — Tina Thompson

Because what happens is, as the economy suffers, tax revenues go down. But unlike businesses, where at least your variable costs go down, in government your variable costs go up: unemployment insurance, workmen's compensation, health care benefits, welfare, you name it. — Meg Whitman

If leaders in the space program had at its beginning in the 1940s, pointed out the benefits to people on earth rather than emphasizing the search for proof of evolution in space, the program would have saved $100 billion in tax money and achieved greater results. — Walter Lang

The government is also looking at further benefits including enhanced capital allowances; the use of Tax Incremental Finance; and extra help from UK Trade and Investment on inward investment and trade opportunities. — Andy Sawford

There's been a lot said about Social Security reform. What has been left out of the debate is the double tax on Social Security benefits. I believe it's time to get rid of a tax that punishes seniors and discourages work and retirement savings. — Rob Simmons

I don't believe there's a red state in America where people believe you should cut Medicare, Social Security and veterans' benefits rather than doing away with corporate tax loopholes. — Bernie Sanders

America's corporate and political elites
now form a regime of their own and
they're privatizing democracy. All the
benefits - the tax cuts, policies and
rewards flow in one direction: up. — Bill Moyers

Quality investing focuses on a company's ability to invest capital at high rates of return: post-tax levels of high-teens (and higher) are possible. Three elements drive corporate cash return on investment: asset turns, profit margins and cash conversion. Asset turns measure how efficiently a company generates sales from additional assets, which can vary greatly depending on the asset intensity of the industry itself; margins reflect the benefits of those incremental sales; and cash conversion reflects a company's working capital intensity and the conservatism of its accounting policies. — Lawrence A. Cunningham

Research has shown that middle-income wage earners would benefit most from a large reduction in corporate tax rates. The corporate tax is not a rich-man's tax. Corporations don't even pay it. They just pass the tax on in terms of lower wages and benefits, higher consumer prices, and less stockholder value. — Lawrence Kudlow