James B. Stewart Quotes

There are some tax expenditures that are there for very obvious and very important and very good policy reasons. Whether it's the charitable deduction or the deduction for homes, it's not a loophole.

Everybody gets ticked off about GE paying no taxes. Look, we have a complicated, convoluted tax system. And only big corporations and wealthy individuals like Warren Buffett can take advantage of it. We need to simplify and flatten the code, get rid of all the loopholes.

There is spending in the tax code.

Over the years, the tax code has become a vehicle for political favoritism and social engineering.

I'm for tax reform, not tax increases.

I think we can have some tax reform, but that doesn't mean tax increases. We ought to make the, the rates flatter. We ought to get rid of a bunch of those loopholes.

What I want to do is make certain that no one's taxes go up. Let's look at cleaning up the tax code.

Corporations do not pay taxes, they collect them, passing the burden to consumers as a cost of production. And corporate taxation is a feast of rent-seeking - a cornucopia of credits, exemptions and other subsidies conferred by the political class on favored, and grateful, corporations.

It’s not easy to get rid of tax loopholes. The reason they are there is that people wanted them there.

If we think that high marginal tax rates are bad because they distort incentives, the same is then true for tax subsidies.

Republicans think tax filing should be easier for you, not just the well-connected.

In fact, the best thing we could do on taxes for all Americans is to simplify the individual tax code. This will be a tough job, but members of both parties have expressed an interest in doing this, and I am prepared to join them.

By keeping most tax rates at present levels, Obama and the Democrats will claim that they have championed tax cuts for the middle class.

The bottom line is we need a tax code that is more simpler, that is more fairer, that gets rid of the special carve-outs, the special lobbyist loopholes. That's the direction we need to go.

My expertise was in public finance, particularly corporate taxation, since I had worked at the US Treasury.

Big business never pays a nickel in taxes, according to Ralph Nader, who represents a big consumer organization that never pays a nickel in taxes.

Everyone now has a sacred cow in the tax code. For my money, the most sacred thing of all is our country and its growth, but the sacred cows have turned into a pack of wolves.

The tax code is very inefficient. Both the personal tax code and the corporate tax code. By closing loopholes and lowering rates, you could increase the efficiency of the tax code and create more incentives for people to invest.

We're going to look awfully stupid if we give income tax relief to people who do not pay income taxes.

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.

I have no tax breaks or corporate interests to be supported by Barack Obama.

We have points in common with the FDP, particularly when it comes to tax.

Tax can be structured in a way that actually encourages investment in infrastructure and encourages investment in Australia from overseas.

The share of income that small business people are paying in taxes is the lowest it has been in 65 years - since Obama has cut taxes 18 or 22 times for small business.

Tax reductions are usually simpler and less distortive. I'm certainly willing to look at getting rid of tax deductions/credits, and go to dramatically reduced rates.