Quotes About Taxation

Here's the problem: the so-called 'millionaire surtax' is a permanent tax to pay for a temporary benefit.

The tenement house is the enemy of modesty, the enemy of virtue, the enemy of patriotism. Home is where the virtues grow. I would like to see the law so that every home, to a small amount, should be free not only from sale for debts, but should be absolutely free from taxation, so that every man could have a home. Then we will have a nation of patriots.

The federal government operates pretty much in line with the quip, "If it moves, tax it; if you can't tax it, control it; if you can't control it, give it a million dollars.

The court approved Hamilton's argument that this excise tax was legal and that Congress had power "over every species of taxable property, except exports."5 The decision in Hylton v. United States not only endorsed Hamilton's broad view of federal taxing power but represented the first time the Supreme Court ever ruled on the constitutionality of an act of Congress.

A central tenet of the American Revolution had been that a corrupt British ministry had suborned Parliament through patronage and pensions and used the resulting excessive influence to tax the colonists and deprive them of their ancient English liberties

Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure.

Unlike every other person and institution in society, government obtains its revenue from coercion, from taxation.

Socialism is great—but eventually you run out of other people's money.

There is something fundamentally unfair about a government that takes away so much of people's money, power, and personal control while telling them that life will be better as a result.

Sugar, rum and tobacco are commodities which are nowhere necessaries of life, which are become objects of almost universal consumption, and which are therefore extremely proper subjects of taxation.

He who has the base necessities of life should pay nothing; taxation on him who has a surplus may, if need be; extend to everything beyond necessities.

In Taxation No Tyranny, Johnson asked, dryly, "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?

Ireland cannot become the collector general for the world. We can only tax on profits generated in the country here.

Democratically elected governments meekly requesting giant corporations to pay pitifully low levels of tax on their enormous profits is not a good look.

Who are ever taxed? Individuals only. Who have property that can be taxed? Individuals only. Who can give their consent to be taxed? Individuals only. Who are ever taxed without their consent? Individuals only. Who, then, are robbed, if taxed without their consent? Individuals only.

I would be open to a proposal that would have some minimum tax level for everyone.

GST may well have to rise, but Singaporeans could be more likely to accept it if the government considers the pros and cons of moving from the established orthodoxy, and consider new approaches that improve social protection thresholds for all, and elderly Singaporeans in particular.

War almost always meant taxation, which ended up putting pressure on government to provide more services for its people. One of the reasons that tiny Britain became such a formidable modern state and then built a global empire was that its many conflicts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries helped it develop not only a superb navy but also an impressive fiscal machine.

We need global tax justice, not charitable scraps dictated by the fancies of the elite.

Everyone must be in the same competitive situation, including on the fiscal level.

A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.

I lay this down as a fundamental proposition, which I do not think will be denied, that whoever controls the taxation and trade policy of a country controls its destiny and the entire character of its civilization.

England has not wholly escaped the curse which must ever befall a free government which holds extensive provinces in subjection; for, although she has not lost her liberty or fallen into anarchy, yet we behold the population of England crushed to the earth by the superincumbent weight of debt and taxation, which may one day terminate in revolution.

Why not just eliminate the federal income tax?