Jonathan Shipley Quotes

In the matter of taxation, every privilege is an injustice.

If the government can make money, what on earth does it collect taxes for you and me for? Why don't it make what money it wants, take the taxes out, and give the balance to us?

When more of the people's sustenance is exacted through the form of taxation than is necessary to meet the just obligations of Government and expenses of its economical administration, such exaction becomes ruthless extortion and a violation of the fundamental principles of a free Government.

By the imposition of a variety of taxes, imposts, stamps, excises and other duties ...[would] squeeze from them [the citizens] the little money they may acquire ...

I hope people understand that when you tax corporations that the concrete and the steel and the plastic don't pay. People pay. And so when you tax corporations, either the employees are going to pay or the shareholders are going to pay or the customers are going to pay. And so corporations are people.

Taxation without representation is tyranny.

I think coercive taxation is theft, and government has a moral duty to keep it to a minimum.

The income tax is the most regressive tax imaginable, allowing government to take first claim on our lives. The income tax assumes government owns us, as individuals, and has a sovereign claim to the fruits of our labor.

A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches by those to whom excise tax is paid.

No government can exist without taxation.... This money must of necessity be levied on the people; and the grand art consists in levying so as not to oppress.

What we should have fought for was representation without taxation.

The object of taxation is to raise a revenue for discharging the debts and defraying the expenses of the community, its operation should be adapted as much as possible to suit the burden with equal hand upon all in proportion with their ability of bearing it without oppression.

America is the land of taxation that was founded to avoid taxation.

While 18th century Americans objected to taxation without representation, they also objected equally to taxation with representation.

When a government finds itself in the calamitous circumstances where it … must tax its people heavily, it behooves it, so far as possible, to see that all those who are liable pay according to their means, and that a proper assessment is made of them. In this way, the middle class is not taxed in order to spare the rich, nor the poor so much more burdened that they no longer have any possibility of improving their condition. Labor is encouraged and industry not deterred. Trade remains free and restricted as little as possible, and so far as possible taxes are levied on objects which go beyond necessity, coming under the category of luxuries, and are therefore conditioned on the choice of the people .

Is there a point of taxation wherein even a Democrat would acknowledge it is thievery by the government?

Of course, we all have to be taxed, but once you start to earn more than £150,000, and start paying 45 per cent tax, you are penalised. It is like a witch hunt.

A government which lays taxes on the people not required by urgent public necessity and sound public policy is not a protector of liberty, but an instrument of tyranny. It condemns the citizen to servitude.

Note, besides, that it is no more immoral to directly rob citizens than to slip indirect taxes into the price of goods that they cannot do without.

Of all the powers conferred upon government, that of taxation is most liable to abuse.

This is a form of double taxation and it's simply unfair.

An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, the power to destroy.

Every good Englishman, abstracted from all regard for America, must oppose … being taxed by the British Parliament. For my own part, I am convinced that no argument … can be produced in support of this right.

Unnecessary taxation is unjust taxation.

Let the Tax be never so great, if it be apoportionable unto all, then no man suffers the loss of any Riches by it.