Income Taxes Quotes
The George W. Bush administration when they had a Republican-controlled Congress, had amended the tax laws to treat the earnings of the hedge fund managers differently from people who manage other enterprises in the nation. They gave a group of very wealthy managers whose earnings were already amongst the highest of any managers in the country a huge tax break, while little public attention was paid to the subtlety of complex tax laws. Daschle and others began to draw public attention to the inequity.
Throughout most of the world, the rich and the aristocrats have been able to reduce or eliminate their tax obligations with the burden falling more heavily on the common people. Progressive taxation was thought to be a solution, but even in the United States by the 21st century many huge corporations paid little or no taxes while there was a heavy tax burden on small companies. Rich people generally paid a smaller percentage of their income than middle class people.
As early as the beginning of the 19th century the Dutch Republic had a sophisticated mechanism for encouraging affluent people to reside on the less affluent areas of the country. They realized that with all the amenities of wealthy cities like Amsterdam or the Hague, the affluent would tend to leave the other areas taking their spending, business, and cultural influence away from the communities that needed them the most. So they gave a tax credit to the affluent who would stay on the poorer regions and communities.
Ford had asked Iacocca, then the President and the number 2 executive to Ford, if he paid any income tax. Iacocca paid about 50 percent of his income as the maximum bracket at the time was over 70 percent. Ford wanted to help him out. At the time Ford earned millions of dollars every month. One of the things that this quote illustrates is that it would not have mattered with Ford whether the maximum tax rate was 30%, 50% or 70%. He and the other super-rich people were not going to pay much anyway because of the loopholes, the deductions, and gaming the system.
This was the case where the Supreme Court reversed its earlier opinion and declared the Income Tax Unconstitutional.
The founder was Charles E. Coughlin, 1891-1979, a demagogic Catholic Priest who drafted the principles and invited others to join him. Hundreds of thousands did in this organization which began in idealism, and ended in scandal and hate mongering, so much so that Father Coughlin was ordered off the radio and out of politics by the Catholic Church. The National Union in 1936 had morphed into the Union Party which ran Presidential candidates in the 1936 election. At the time, a progressive income tax was an anathema to most people, however it became the norm in later years and although the idea did not originate with the Union, was one of the few lasting contributions of the Union.
The original constitution allowed federal taxes on the states or on the people to be levied only proportional to the number of people in the state—a so called “head tax” of “poll tax.” This was a very regressive form of taxation since the rich could only be taxed the same amount as the poor even though they could afford much more and the poor could hardly afford anything at all. This amendment paved the way for the income tax where a percentage of income could now be taxed.
From the earliest days of the nation a very few people have left the country for reasons which range from seeking more economic freedom (less or no taxes or regulation) or personal liberty (being drafted for a war to which they disapproved and didn’t want to fight in or escaping government invading their privacy). However, while there are countries which on one or two issues may be to some people’s thinking better than the United States, a tiny few have left America while millions pour in—legally and illegally—to have what the overwhelming number of people in the world is one of the greatest places to live in the history of the world. See Cambell’s counter to Norquist: {634644}.
Comment made in the Congressional Congress debates in 1787. This precedes individual taxation. In the debate, Wilson felt state taxation “should accord with the number of freemen” as “it is strange that annexing the name of ‘State’ to ten thousand men, should give them an equal right with forty thousand.”
