Excise Taxes, Excise Tax Quotes

The Constitution acknowledges two kinds of taxes: direct and indirect... Examples of direct taxes are income and property taxes... Examples of indirect taxes are import and excise taxes.

The taxes derived from distilled and malt liquors and from tobacco, as reported by the United States Commissioner, in 1912 amounted to $290,250,000. This was considerably more than the entire congressional appropriations for the army and navy; and in sixteen months these taxes pour into the treasury more than the estimated cost of the Panama Canal.

The income tax is a twentieth-century socialist experiment that has failed. Before the income tax was imposed on us just 80 years ago, government had no claim to our income. Only sales, excise, and tariff taxes were allowed.

They tell us Congress won't lay dry [direct] taxes upon us, but collect all the money they want by impost [import duties]. I say, there has always been a difficulty about impost.... They won't be able to raise money enough by impost, and then they will lay it on the land and take all we have got.

Sugar, rum and tobacco are commodities which are nowhere necessaries of life, which are become objects of almost universal consumption, and which are therefore extremely proper subjects of taxation.

Vices make very good patriots?

It is always better to tax bad things than good things.

Back then, the excise tax was designed to be a luxury tax for people who owned telephones.

A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches by those to whom excise tax is paid.

Politicians like to talk about the income tax when they talk about overtaxing the rich, but the income tax is just one part of the total tax system. There are sales taxes, Medicare taxes, social security taxes, unemployment taxes, gasoline taxes, excise taxes - and when you add up all of those taxes [many of which are quite regressive], and then you look at how they affect the rich and the poor, you essentially end up with a system in which the best off 20 percent of Americans pay one percentage point more of their income than the worst off 20 percent of Americans.

We contended with Great Britain--some said for a three-penny duty on tea; but it was not that. It was because they claimed a right to tax us and bind us in all cases whatever. And does not this Constitution do the same? Does it not take away all we have--all our property? Does it not lay all taxes, duties, imposts, and excises? And what more have we to give?

We tax air passengers like cigarettes and alcohol - we impose sin taxes on travellers.