Paul O'Neill Quotes

Our tax code is arcane, burdensome and unwieldy. In the years since Ronald Reagan's 1986 Tax Reform Act, the code has gone from fewer than 30,000 pages to more than 70,000.

The tax code is now nine times longer than the Bible, and not nearly as interesting.

For years, people have begged Washington for a tax code that is simple and easy to understand.

The tax code is just too big.

The tax code's complexity adds enormous costs to families and businesses across the country and takes nothing short of an army of federal bureaucrats to enforce.

Look at the current tax code. It’s a 10 million word mess..

No average citizen in America today can figure out the tax code.

We have always looked at taxes as a cost, just as any other cost that comes with doing business.

We want taxpayers, not tax wasters.

Taxation under every form presents but a choice of evils.

It seems idle to speculate in the abstract as to whether or not a progressive income tax schedule rising to rates in excess of 70 percent are justifiable …. The fact is that such rates cannot be successfully collected.

The Internal Revenue Code is like a tire that has been patched over and over…. At this point however, it is more patch than tire.

A tax code becomes an instrument of social policy.

The tax code has been flawed and inefficient for a very long time, precisely because fixing it could be so terribly disruptive.

We spend millions of hours doing taxes and spend so much money doing our taxes. It should be very simple.

The complexity of a tax system is every bit as damaging to competitiveness as the overall tax rate. The more convoluted the tax code becomes, the more time we have to take off work to comply with it.

I don't know why anyone would prefer a more complicated tax code instead of a simpler one.

The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets.

Tax policy is not about compassion.

I think it's a little unfair for people to say you're not paying your fair share of taxes. I'm paying what I'm supposed to pay. Change the law, and I'll pay what I'm supposed to pay.

We can fight over what the taxation levels should be, but the tax system should be very, very simple and not distortionary.

Make as much money as you can, but can you please pay your taxes, because this is a major problem.

We had 90 percent rates, but nobody paid them. And so you had all these exemptions, exclusions, shelters, all this kind of stuff. And that's why most Americans are saying, 'Look, let's just be honest. Let's have lower rates, but everybody pays them.'

I've always been paying my taxes and I've always been trying to comply.

Governor Romney has paid 100 percent of his taxes that are owed. He has complied 100 percent with what the law requires.