Quotes About Taxes

Most European countries fund their low corporate taxes with some form of a value-added tax, on consumption rather than income.

In 1948, a married couple with the median income and two children paid only 2 percent of its income in state, federal, and social security taxes. In 1991 they paid 30 percent.

I believe compulsory labor is less opposed to liberty than taxes.

Another difference between death and taxes is that you don't have to work like fury to pay for the dying you did last year.

As I went about with my father, when he collected taxes, I knew that when taxes were laid someone had to work hard to earn the money to pay them.

A survey says that American workers work the first three hours every day just to pay their taxes. So that's why we can't get anything done in the morning: We're government workers.

Congratulations on your job at the bank! Yes. You work for the bank. After taxes, your largest expense is your mortgage and credit-card debt.

I am a little discouraged and irritated at the welfare recipient families growing in size all the time. Those of us who work and pay taxes all the time shouldn't have to pay for these kids.

More taxes, more regulation, more Washington domination, more debt. Those things are not the future for America. They will never work.

You can pay Uncle Sam with all your overtime, is that all you get for your money?

I made 22 million in 14 years... with taxes, and travel and everything else, it gets blown out the window... which is why I still need to work.

An economic strategy built around hiking taxes for business means one thing: fewer jobs.

Everyone without extraordinary research skills ought to be able to know what is happening inside the government, how it operates, where their tax dollars are going. Then they can make better decisions in the electoral process.

Now, speaking as men no longer dared to speak, his daughter had fearlessly arraigned the Triumvirs themselves. 'Why should we women pay taxes,' Hortensia had demanded, 'when we have no part in the honours, the commands, the rule of the state?'23 To this question, the Triumvirs had responded by having the women driven from the Forum; but such was their embarrassment that they did eventually, with much bad grace, agree to a tax cut.

Commoners already paid the lion's share of national taxes and, because of these old feudal records, they now also paid a whole host of other duties to their local nobles (who, further inspiring anger, were exempt from most national taxes). Like the American Revolution before it, the French Revolution began as a tax revolt, and there were even rumors that King Louis XVI himself authorized the burning sprees because he felt the taxes on his people were unjustly high.

Government expands to absorb revenue - and then some.

The only way that I can see America ever becoming a strong nation again is to stop being a debtor nation and to begin spending less than is taxed on it's people.

On these issues, the public fib. They say they want increased spending, and in theory they do—but in practice they think someone else should pay for it. However, there it is. As I used to say, the public aren't always logical, but that's their prerogative. They do expect their government to be, nonetheless.

Ever since the first introduction of taxes and regulations, the French have devoted much time and energy to evading them: it is so much a part of the French way of life that even now there is an official consolation of 10 percent for those who have no possibility of concealing their exact incomes.

But public opinion surveys show overwhelming support for raising taxes on the rich. One recent poll even found that 45 percent of self-identified Republicans support Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's suggestion of a top rate of 70 percent.

Look, we've seen this over and over again—three times since 1980. Republicans rail against budget deficits when they're out of power, then drop all their concerns and send the deficit soaring once they are in a position to cut taxes. Then when it's the Democrats' turn, they're expected to clean up the Republicans' red ink rather than address their own priorities. Enough already.

Any political analyst who didn't see this coming should find a different profession. After all, "starve the beast"—cut taxes on the rich, then use the resulting deficits as an excuse to hack away at the safety net—has been G.O.P. strategy for decades.

Political scientists studying the behavior of billionaires find that while many of them push for lower taxes, they do so more or less in secret, presumably because they realize just how unpopular their position really is. This "stealth politics" is, by the way, one reason billionaires can seem much more liberal than they actually are—only the handful of liberals among them speak out in public.

Tax cuts for the rich are the G.O.P.'s defining policy, but two-thirds of voters believe that taxes on the rich are actually too low, while only 7 percent believe that they're too high. Voters support Elizabeth Warren's proposed tax on large fortunes by a three-to-one majority. Only a small minority want to see cuts in Medicaid, even though such cuts have been central to every G.O.P. health care proposal in recent years.