Milton Friedman Quotes

It is from the power of taxation being in the hands of those who can throw so great a part of it from their own shoulders, that it has raged without a check.

The true principle of taxation is the benefit principle - those who benefit from a government service should pay for it. It's also known as the 'user pay' principle. Every effort should be made to link the payment of taxes or fees to the cost associated with the government service.

There's a lot of evidence you can sell people on tax increases if they think its an investment.

The power to tax is the power to govern.

I cannot support taxing the taxpayer.

People are taxed enough.

I'm not going to raise taxes.

We have no interest in raising taxes.

HALF of America pays NO taxes. Zero. So they're happy for tax rates to be raised on the other half that DOES pay any taxes.

The message coming out of Washington, especially from our leftist politicians and the news media, is that we solve our budget problems by raising taxes on the rich. If Americans were more informed, such a message would be insulting to our intelligence. There are not enough rich people to satisfy Congress' appetite.

There's only one kind of tax that would please everybody - one that nobody but the other guy has to pay.

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?

Tax policy is not about compassion.

I'm for tax reform, not tax increases.

We do not commonly see in a tax a diminution of freedom, and yet it clearly is one.

If I make a dollar and out of every dollar I'm taxed at 50, half, at 50 cents, I have to give, isn't that like enough?

If you increase the sales tax... everybody would be taxed.

I think that taxes have to exist. They should exist at the lowest possible level, and to the extent that we can, we shouldn't invent more. Maybe that's my experience being mayor of New York City, where we had so many taxes.

The American taxpayers are a powerful force. They don't want their taxes raised.

The power to tax is the power to destroy.

I'm not for no taxes. That would be an anarchist. I am for lower taxes.

It is my absolute intent to hold the line on taxes.

The move to tax Internet sales, clothed as a 'fairness' issue, is the typical 'wolf-in-sheep's-clothing' ploy so often used by governments unwilling to cut expenditures to match revenues. It matters not whether its proponents have a 'D' or an 'R' after their name. It is a tax increase in either case.

Look, only in Washington is not raising taxes considered a tax cut. Nobody's getting a tax cut here. We're not cutting taxes. We're preventing tax increases from occurring.

Besides, we had a large debt, contracted at home and abroad in our War of Independence; therefore the great power of taxation was conferred upon this Government.