Taxation Equity Quotes

The power to tax is not the power to destroy.

The income tax is the most regressive tax imaginable, allowing government to take first claim on our lives. The income tax assumes government owns us, as individuals, and has a sovereign claim to the fruits of our labor.

I think coercive taxation is theft, and government has a moral duty to keep it to a minimum.

The object of taxation is to raise a revenue for discharging the debts and defraying the expenses of the community, its operation should be adapted as much as possible to suit the burden with equal hand upon all in proportion with their ability of bearing it without oppression.

Arbitrary taxation is plunder authorized by law.

A tariff which cuts us off from our proper part in the commerce of the world, violates the just principles of taxation, and makes the Government a facile instrument in the hand of private interests;

No government can exist without taxation.... This money must of necessity be levied on the people; and the grand art consists in levying so as not to oppress.

By the imposition of a variety of taxes, imposts, stamps, excises and other duties ...[would] squeeze from them [the citizens] the little money they may acquire ...

We should be forced to give so many exemptions and concessions (inevitably to the benefit of high spending authorities in Inner London) that the flat-rate poll tax would rapidly become a surrogate income tax.

I hope people understand that when you tax corporations that the concrete and the steel and the plastic don't pay. People pay. And so when you tax corporations, either the employees are going to pay or the shareholders are going to pay or the customers are going to pay. And so corporations are people.

If the government can make money, what on earth does it collect taxes for you and me for? Why don't it make what money it wants, take the taxes out, and give the balance to us?

My view is that we should not be taxing at the Federal level for the things that New Jersey can do for itself.

When more of the people's sustenance is exacted through the form of taxation than is necessary to meet the just obligations of Government and expenses of its economical administration, such exaction becomes ruthless extortion and a violation of the fundamental principles of a free Government.

What we should have fought for was representation without taxation.

This is a form of double taxation and it's simply unfair.

Sometimes 'sin' taxes are useful not because of their perceived health benefits but because they are effectively a form of voluntary taxation which tends to arouse less irritation than other taxes.

Unnecessary taxation is unjust taxation.

When a government finds itself in the calamitous circumstances where it … must tax its people heavily, it behooves it, so far as possible, to see that all those who are liable pay according to their means, and that a proper assessment is made of them. In this way, the middle class is not taxed in order to spare the rich, nor the poor so much more burdened that they no longer have any possibility of improving their condition. Labor is encouraged and industry not deterred. Trade remains free and restricted as little as possible, and so far as possible taxes are levied on objects which go beyond necessity, coming under the category of luxuries, and are therefore conditioned on the choice of the people .

Men at a distance, who have admired our systems of government unfounded in nature, are apt to accuse the rulers, and say that taxes have been assessed too high and collected too rigidly.

Is this not true--That in proportion to the value of their estates the extremely wealthy pay far less taxes than those of moderatemeans? Compare the amount paid by millionaires with the amount paid by ordinary citizens. I believe that in proportion to their estates they pay less than half as much as ordinary citizens, whereas they ought to pay more.

If America is about fairness, it is about equal incomes paying equal taxes.

… in no case shall nonresident proprietors be taxed higher than residents

Why should Ontario pay for Quebec's fucking?