Taxation Inequality Quotes

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.

In the laws of the land, she has no rights; in government she has no voice. And in spite of another principle recognized in this Republic, namely, that 'taxation without representation is tyranny,' she is taxed without being represented.

The tendency of taxation is to create a class of persons who do not labor, to take from those who do labor the produce of that labor, and to give it to those who do not labor.

Did folks know that the tax to fund the program [Social Security] only hits salaries up to $110,000? That means that if you make a million bucks, about 90% of your salary is tax free when it comes to the payroll tax that funds Soc Sec. That ain't right.

While 18th century Americans objected to taxation without representation, they also objected equally to taxation with representation.

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 ...

If all those magnificent cathedrals with their valuable lands in Boston, Philadelphia and New York were taxed as they should be, the taxes of women who hold property would be proportionately lightened....I cannot see any good reason why wealthy churches and a certain amount of property of the clergy should be exempt from taxation, while every poor widow in the land, struggling to feed, clothe, and educate a family of children, must be taxed on the narrow lot and humble home.

When governments run on petro dollars or petro revenue instead of taxes, then they kind of sever the link between taxation and representation, and if you're not being taxed, then you're not being represented.

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.

I think with the advent of Reagan, and subsequently, both parties, there's been a strong move towards the advantage given to the richer people, in taxation and grants and supplements and things of that kind. Primarily exacerbated more recently by the Supreme Court's stupid ruling on Citizens United, and now there's a massive flood of money into the political system that I think has subverted the essence of a moral and ethical standard that used to permeate American democracy. Now it's not an admirable process. I think we've gone backwards.

The liberals who demanded equality of taxation on behalf of the poor, for instance, did not imagine that they would obtain progressive taxation to the disadvantage of the well-off, and that they would end up with an arrangement in which taxes are voted by those who do not pay them.

What we should have fought for was representation without taxation.

No church property is taxed and so the infidel and the atheist and the man without religion are taxed to make up the deficit.

This is Robin Hood in reverse. These tax cap proposals favor those with the most expensive properties. We are spreading the taxes to those with some of the least expensive property.

Taxation without representation is tyranny.

Highly graduate taxation realizes most completely the supreme danger of democracy, creating a state of things in which one class imposes on another burdens which it is not asked to share, and impels the State into vast schemes of extravagance, under the belief that the whole costs will be thrown upon others.

If inequalities of taxable wealth backing up a government service are construed as denying equality before the law, then there is no solution but to have every government service whatever financed out of Washington.

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 .

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.

The real problem with the IRS is that they let General Electric not pay any taxes -- and 50 other corporations -- that's the real scandal.

All taxes, except a 'lump-sum tax,' introduce distortions in the economy. But no government can impose a lump-sum tax - the same amount for everyone regardless of their income or expenditures - because it would fall heaviest on those with less income, and it would grind the poor, who might be unable to pay it at all.

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

I'm offended by any suggestion that we have to beat groups of people over the head with an economic club [higher taxes] to keep them from exercising their freedom of choice in the marketplace.

What is it but a cunningly devised scheme to take from one State and to give to another - to replenish the treasury of some of the States from the pockets of the people of the others; in reality, to make them support the governments and pay the debts of other States as well as their own?