taxation theory Quotes

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.'

Arthur Laffer's idea, that lowering taxes could increase revenues, was logically correct. If tax rates are high enough, then people will go to such lengths to avoid them that cutting taxes can increase revenues. What he was wrong about was in thinking that income tax rates were already so high in the 1970s that cutting them would raise revenues.

The theory of the IRS is rather repugnant to me because the assumption is made that I, the government, owns 100% of your income and I permit you to keep 5%, 10% or 20%. You're vulnerable, you've sold out. The government can take 80% if they want, which they did at one time.

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

The state has been living on a revenue which was being produced in the private sphere for private purposes and had to be deflected from these purposes by political force. The theory that construes taxes on the analogy of club dues or of the purchase of the services of, say, a doctor only proves how far removed this part of the social sciences is from scientific habits of mind.

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

If you drive a car, I'll tax the street; if you try to sit, I'll tax your seat; if you get too cold, I'll tax the heat; if you take a walk, I'll tax your feet.

Let me tell you, that's what taxation is - it's confiscation. It's your money, it's not the government's money. But the government makes you think that it all comes from them.

The philosophy underlying the system of progressive taxation is that the income and wealth of the well-to-do classes can be freely tapped. What the advocates of these tax rates fail to realize is that the greater part of the incomes taxed away would not have been consumed but saved and invested.

It would be thought a hard government that should tax its people one tenth part.

Some experts have declared that it is necessary to tax the people until it hurts. I disagree with these sadists.

Coolidge was a pragmatist. He didn't start out with a tax theory. But he observed over time that lower tax rates sometimes brought in extra revenue. The success of his and Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon's experiment with rate cuts has been obscured by our modern history books.

America's political landscape is infested with many zombie ideas - beliefs about policy that have been repeatedly refuted with evidence and analysis but refuse to die. The most prominent zombie is the insistence that low taxes on rich people are the key to prosperity.