Anthony Burgess Quotes

We have to deal with two issues. Spending and taxes.

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

Taxes are the lifeblood of Government

Crucially, African governments must ensure they prioritize the eradication of tax evasion and tax avoidance.

There is no art which government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.

Governments don't reduce deficits by raising taxes on the people; governments reduce deficits by controlling spending and stimulating new wealth.

Taxes are the sinews of the state.

Democrats have always wanted to grow government with revenues from our society's producers. They aren't sincere about reducing the deficit, because they will not abandon their addiction to spending other people's money.

Throughout history governments have been chronically short of revenue. The reason should be clear: unlike you and me, governments do not produce useful goods and services that they can sell on the market; governments, rather than producing and selling services, live parasitically off the market and off society.

The best way for the Government to maintain its credit is to pay as it goes-not by resorting to loans, but by keeping out of debt-through an adequate income secured by a system of taxation, external or internal, or both.

You've got to have tax reform to get faster economic growth. Faster economic growth is necessary for us to get our debt under control.

Everything a politician promises at election time has to be paid for either by higher taxation or by borrowing.

The amount of money coming into Washington is not a factor when the Democrats start spending it. Witness Obama. National debt doubled in eight years. It didn't matter what the tax revenue was. Didn't matter. He was gonna spend the money anyway.

Who can dispute that the governments of the United States constitute the most voracious tax system in the history of mankind? In the year 2000, those governments succeeded in laying hands on more than $3 trillion - almost $11,000 each for the 275 million men, women, and children resident in the country. No other nation-state rakes in an amount even close to the U.S. total.

In reality, finding a way to raise taxes may well be the central political problem facing the United States.

Everybody else, including the rich people, are willing to pay more. They want to pay more.

Let us never forget this fundamental truth: The State has no source of money other than the money people themselves earn.

If, at the end of the day, we need to raise taxes, we should raise taxes.

Coolidge thought budgets were virtuous. He had his econ straight. He didn't just cut taxes, he also cut the budget.

Some years down the pike, we're going to get the real solution, which is going to be a combination of death panels and sales taxes. It's going to be that we're actually going to take Medicare under control, and we're going to have to get some additional revenue, probably from a VAT. But it's not going to happen now.

[Government's] great contribution to human wisdom...is the discovery that the taxpayer has more than one pocket.

Americans tend not to be too enthusiastic about having their taxes raised again....But if the American people aren't going to accept it, if the politicians don't have the courage to raise taxes, what are we facing down the road?

The power of creating new funds upon new objects of taxation, by its own authority, would enable the national government to borrow as far as its necessities might require.

We don't have a tax revenue problem in Washington, we have a spending problem in Washington.

The federal government cannot maintain a budget surplus any more than an alcoholic can leave a fresh bottle of whiskey untouched in the cupboard.