Taxation Authority Quotes

The power to tax is not the power to destroy.

The power to tax is the power to destroy.

The power to tax and spend is restricted by the enumerated powers.

An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, the power to destroy.

A government is a compulsory territorial monopolist of ultimate decision-making (jurisdiction) and, implied in this, a compulsory territorial monopolist of taxation. That is, a government is the ultimate arbiter, for the inhabitants of a given territory, regarding what is just and what is not, and it can determine unilaterally, i.e., without requiring the consent of those seeking justice or arbitration, the price that justice-seekers must pay to the government for providing this service.

The power of taxing themselves is an undoubted and most important privilege of the people of England.

The power of taxing people and their property is essential to the very existence of government.

The power to tax is the power to govern.

Congress have an unlimited power to raise money ... restricted only by the duty to appropriate it to the purpose of common defense and of general, not local; national, not State benefit.

I know of no power, indeed, of which a free people ought to be more jealous, than of that of levying taxes and duties.

We do not commonly see in a tax a diminution of freedom, and yet it clearly is one.

The power to tax, once conceded, has no limits; it continues until it destroys.

In explaining the Constitution, James Madison, the acknowledged father of the Constitution, wrote in Federalist Paper 45: 'The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peach, negotiation, and foreign commerce.' Has the Constitution been amended to permit Congress to tax, spend and regulate as it pleases or have Americans said, 'To hell with the Constitution'?

Besides, we had a large debt, contracted at home and abroad in our War of Independence; therefore the great power of taxation was conferred upon this Government.

No tax may be laid without the consent of the nation

When the stamp-act was made, the authority of parliament to impose internal taxes was denied, but their right to impose external ones … to lay duties upon goods … was admitted. When the act was made imposing duties upon tea, … a new distinction was set up, that the parliament had a right to lay duties … for the purpose of regulating trade but not for the purpose of raising a revenue.

It is from the power of taxation being in the hands of those who can throw so great a part of it from their own shoulders, that it has raged without a check.

Essentially, Robin Hood put a smackdown on the medieval equivalent of the IRS.

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

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.

Liberty ... was a two-headed boon. There was first, the liberty of the people as a whole to determine the forms of their own government, to levy their own taxes, and to make their own laws.... There was second, the liberty of the individual man to live his own life, within the limits of decency and decorum, as he pleased -- freedom from the despotism of the majority.

Congress can raise taxes because it can persuade a sizable fraction of the populace that somebody else will pay

A government may only govern so long as the people, through their representatives, vote it the money to carry on.

If Scotland is to have the power to fix its income tax rate for the whole country, England needs a body that can fix its income tax rate for the whole country.

While private property is commonly lodged in the subject, whenever exigency required supply all property is transferred to the sovereign. The consent of Parliament is not necessary for the imposition of taxes.