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I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle. ― Winston S. Churchill
If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street. If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat. If you get too cold, I’ll tax the heat. If you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet. Taxman! Well, I’m the taxman. Yeah, I’m the taxman. — The Beatles (‘‘Taxman’’)
The taxpayer — that’s someone who works forthe federal government but doesn’t have to take a civil service examination. — Ronald Reagan
It is your tax which pays for public spending. The government have no money of their own. There is only taxpayers' money. – Margaret Thatcher
When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that an old source is abandoned. It merely means that the politicians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had only onebefore. — H.L. Mencken
What Mae West said about sex is true about taxes. All tax cuts are good tax cuts; even bad tax cuts are good tax cuts. — Grover Norquist
Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. ... If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." - Ronald Reagan
In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other. - Voltaire
It should be known that at the beginning of the dynasty, taxation yields a large revenue from small assessments. At the end of the dynasty, taxation yields a small revenue from large assessments. - Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah.
Among the many other questions raised bythe nebulous concept of ‘‘greed’’ is why it is a term applied almost exclusively to those who want to earn more money or to keep what they have already earned — never to those wanting to take other people’s money in taxes or to those wishing to live on the largess dispensed from such taxation. No amount of taxation is ever described as ‘‘greed’’ on the part of government or the clientele of government. — Thomas Sowell
Why tribute? Why should we pay tribute? If Caesar can hide the sun from us with a blanket, or put the moon in his pocket, we will pay him tribute for light; else, sir, no more tribute. — William Shakespeare (Cymbeline)
There are those who seem to have nothing else to do but to suggest modes of taxation to men in office. - Robert Peel
The best way to restrain the politicians' impulse to spend and to expand government's reach is to keep the surplus modest. That means lowering taxes. - R. Emmett Tyrrell
[Responding to Chancellor of the Exchequer Gladstone's question as to the practical uses of electricity:] Why, sir, there is every probability that you will soon be able to tax it! - Michael Faraday
A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. - George Bernard Shaw
Taxes are paid in the sweat of every man who labours. If those taxes are excessive, they are reflected in idle factories, tax-sold farms and in hordes of hungry people, tramping the streets and seeking jobs in vain. - Franklin D. Roosevelt
A citizen can hardly distinguish between a tax and a fine, except that the fine is generally much lighter. - G.K. Chesterton
The mounting burden of taxation not only undermines individual incentives to increased work and earnings, but in a score of ways discourages capital accumulation and distorts, unbalances, and shrinks production. - Henry Hazlitt
The state has grown used to treating its taxpayers as a farmer treats his cows, keeping them in a field to be milked. - James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg
There is no art which one government sooner learns from another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people. - Adam Smith
The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the least possible amount of hissing. - Jean Baptiste Colbert
Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things. - Adam Smith
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. - P.J. O'Rourke
Every man, to be sure, is desirous of pushing off from himself the burden of any tax, which is imposed, and of laying it upon others. - David Hume
The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation. - Vladimir I. Lenin
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. - Thomas Sowell
It is not fair to tax the same earnings twice - once when you earn them and again when you die - so we must repeal the death tax. - George W. Bush
I'd like somebody to get rid of the death tax. That's what I want. I don't want to get taxed just because I died. I just don't think it's right. If I give something to my kid, I already paid the tax. Why should I have to pay it again because I died? - Whoopi Goldberg
A tax . . . may obstruct the industry of the people, and discourage them from applying to certain branches of business which might give maintenance and employment to great multitudes. While it obliges the people to pay, it may thus diminish, or perhaps destroy, some of the funds which might enable them more easily to do so. - Adam Smith
I will tell you a secret, which I learned many years ago from the commissioners of the customs in London: They said, when any commodity appeared to be taxed above a moderate rate, the consequence was to lessen that branch of the revenue by one half; and one of those gentlemen pleasantly told me, that the mistake of Parliaments, on such occasions, was owing to an error in computing two and two to make four; whereas in the business of laying heavy impositions, two and two never make more than one; which happens by lessening the import, and the strong temptation of running such goods as paid high duties. - Jonathan Swift
The high duties which have been imposed upon the importation of many different sorts of foreign goods, in order to discourage their consumption in Great Britain, have in many cases served only to encourage smuggling; and in all cases have reduced the revenue of the customs below what more moderate duties would have afforded. The saying of Dr. Swift, that in the arithmetic of the customs two and two, instead of making four, make sometimes only one, holds perfectly true with regard to such heavy duties. - Adam Smith
High taxes frequently afford a smaller revenue to the government than what might be drawn from more moderate taxes. - Adam Smith
What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin. - Mark Twain
[As the Roman Empire declined] the resources of the farmers were exhausted by outrageous burdens of all taxes, the fields were abandoned, and the cultivated land reverted to waste. - Lactantius
It is a paradoxical truth, that tax rates are too high today, and tax revenues are too low, and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the tax rates. - John F. Kennedy
Experience does not show that the higher tax rate produces the larger revenue. Experience is all the other way. There is no escaping that when the taxation of large incomes is excessive they tend to disappear. - Calvin Coolidge
It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the tax rates... An economy constrained by high tax rates will never produce enough revenue to balance the budget, just as it will never create enough jobs or enough profits. - John F Kennedy
Nor should the argument seem strange that taxation may be so high as to defeat its object and that, given sufficient time to gather the fruits, a reduction of taxation will run a better chance than an increase of balancing the budget. For to take the opposite view today is to resemble a manufacturer who, running at a loss, decides to raise his price, and when his declining sales increase the loss, wrapping himself in the rectitude of plain arithmetic, decides that prudence requires him to raise the price still more -- and who, when at last his account is balanced with nought on both sides, is still found righteously declaring that it would have been the act of a gambler to reduce the price when you were already making a loss. - John Maynard Keynes