J. P. Morgan Quotes
Congress should know how to levy taxes, and if it doesn't know how to collect them, then a man is a fool to pay the taxes.
J. Pierpont Morgan, 1837-1913, Financier, Quoted in New York Times, March 6, 1955
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
He turned out to be very wrong as there were a number of times in American history when there were tax rates in excess of 70 percent, and they were collected.
There are many who would disagree with Presti’s description, while many others have this as a chief complaint. The agency tends to change from administration to administration as to its policies and collection methods. In the decades since this criticism, the agency has changed a good deal. However, there are great differences between IRS practices in different parts of the country, some of which are better than the others. One of the major problems of the IRS is the conflict between collecting taxes that should have been paid and were not and ruining the business or individual that committed the offense by taking current working capital. Congress has NEVER weighed in on this question preferring to let the Civil Servants take the heat.
John Pierpont Morgan was an American financier and banker who dominated corporate finance on Wall Street throughout the Gilded Age. As the head of the banking firm that ultimately became known as J.P. Morgan and Co., he was a driving force behind the wave of industrial consolidation in the United States spanning the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
