Taxation Principles Quotes

What exactly is your 'fair share' of what someone else has worked for?

A tax is a fine for doing well, a fine is a tax for doing wrong.

If a tax cut increases government revenues, you haven't cut taxes enough.

In my home state of Indiana we prove every day that you can build a growing economy on balanced budgets, low taxes.

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.

One thing is clear: The Founding Fathers never intended a nation where citizens would pay nearly half of everything they earn to the government.

There can be no such thing as 'fairness in taxation.' Taxation is nothing but organized theft, and the concept of a 'fair tax' is therefore every bit as absurd as that of 'fair theft.'

Millions and millions of people don't pay an income tax, because they don't earn enough to pay on one, but you pay a land tax whether it ever did or ever will earn you a penny. You should pay on things that you buy outside of bare necessities. I think this sales tax is the best tax we have had in years.

Under this republic the rewards of industry belong to those who earn them. The only constitutional tax is the tax which ministers to public necessity.

I'm in favor of doing tax reform, but I think tax reform ought to be revenue neutral as it was back during the [Ronald] Reagan years. We've resolved this issue.

Taxation, gentlemen, is very much like dairy farming. The task is to extract the maximum amount of milk with the minimum amount of moo.

Income and inheritance taxes imply the denial of private property, and in that are different in principle from all other taxes. The government says to the citizen: “Your earnings are not exclusively your own; we have a claim on them, and our claim precedes yours; we will allow you to keep some of it, because we recognize your need, not your right; but whatever we grant you for yourself is for us to decide.

Tax (reform) is ultimately a decision about values.

Here's a brave old reality, taxes don't go away; raising them never generates revenue, never ever ever.

No taxes can be devised which are not more or less inconvenient and unpleasant.

In my experience everyone will have a different view of the right level of tax so governments need to provide clear guidance that conforms to a set of international standards that all governments accept.

If Parliament may take from me one shilling in the pound, what security have I for the other nineteen?

Taxes are necessary. But the system of discriminatory taxation universally accepted under the misleading name of progressive taxation of income and inheritance is not a mode of taxation. It is rather a mode of disguised expropriation of the successful capitalists and entrepreneurs.

What I agree with is that we need a significantly changed taxation system. And the one that I've advocated is based on tithing, because I think God is a pretty fair guy. And he said, you know, if you give me a tithe, it doesn't matter how much you make.

There is no part of the administration of government that requires extensive information and a thorough knowledge of the principles of political economy, so much as the business of taxation. The man who understands those principles best will be least likely to resort to oppressive expedients, or sacrifice any particular class of citizens to the procurement of revenue. It might be demonstrated that the most productive system of finance will always be the least burdensome.

There will be no overall increase in the tax burden whatsoever.

Even if you assume that the whole economy would work better had we never had double taxation, having the envy and resentment of the richest paying low or no taxes screams of injustice. You have to have a fair system.

Taxes are the flip side of expenditures. The same issues apply on both sides. There are questions of fairness and justice as much in the way you take money away as in the way you disburse it.

The sales tax is the best and most equitable tax. The gasoline tax, which is nothing but a sales tax, has proven painless, productive and punitive. Everything we buy should have its equal proportion of tax, outside of cheap food and cheap clothes.

Accounting is a big subject and there are huge forces in play. The entire momentum of existing thinking and existing custom is in a direction that allows terrible follies to happen, and the terrible follies have terrible consequences.