quotes about Taxation
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My family achieved success not in spite of, but because of the American system of taxation. After all, without reliable and safe roads there’d have been no Disneyland; without high functioning legal systems and a well regulated business environment there would have been no copyright protection for Mickey Mouse.
-- Abigail Disney -
It is a singular advantage of taxes on articles of consumption that they contain in their own nature a security against excess. They prescribe their own limit, which cannot be exceeded without defeating the end purposed - that is, an extension of the revenue.
-- Alexander Hamilton -
As to Taxes, they are evidently inseparable from Government. It is impossible without them to pay the debts of the nation, to protect it from foreign danger, or to secure individuals from lawless violence and rapine.
-- Alexander Hamilton -
The history of taxation shows that taxes which are inherently excessive are not paid. The high rates inevitably put pressure upon the taxpayer to withdraw his capital from productive business.
-- Andrew Mellon -
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Tax reform is taking the taxes off things that have been taxed in the past and putting taxes on things that haven't been taxed before.
-- Art BuchwaldSource : Art Buchwald (1963). “I Chose Capitol Punishment”
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Government spending is taxation. When you look at this, I've never heard of a poor person spending himself into prosperity; let alone I've never heard of a poor person taxing himself into prosperity.
-- Arthur Laffer -
The tax collector must love poor people, he's creating so many of them.
-- Bill Vaughan -
[Libertarians] don't denounce what the state does, they just object to who's doing it. This is why the people most victimized by the state display the least interest in libertarianism. Those on the receiving end of coercion don't quibble over their coercers' credentials. If you can't pay or don't want to, you don't much care if your deprivation is called larceny or taxation or restitution or rent. If you like to control your own time, you distinguish employment from enslavement only in degree and duration.
-- Bob Black -
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Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery.
-- Calvin CoolidgeSource : Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.
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The property of the people belongs to the people. To take it from them by taxation cannot be justified except by urgent public necessity. Unless this principle be recognized our country is no longer secure, our people no longer free.
-- Calvin Coolidge -
There is no escaping the fact that when the taxation of large incomes is excessive, they tend to disappear.
-- Calvin Coolidge -
The ceiling on taxation of capital gains reflects the national belief that speculation is a more worthwhile way to make a living than work.
-- Calvin Trillin -
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Is there a point of taxation wherein even a Democrat would acknowledge it is thievery by the government?
-- Dennis Prager -
This is a form of double taxation and it's simply unfair.
-- Doc Hastings -
If it is the duty of the State to educate, it is the duty of the State also to bear the burden of education, namely, the taxation out of which education is provided.
-- Edmund Barton -
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By the end of the Twentieth Century, taxation will be reduced to a minimum, the entire world will be open to trade, and there will be no need of a standing army.
-- Erastus Wiman -
Our forefathers made one mistake. What they should have fought for was representation without taxation.
-- Fletcher Knebel -
Taxation is nothing but organized robbery, and there the subject should be dropped.
-- Frank ChodorovSource : Frank Chodorov (1980). “Fugitive essays: selected writings of Frank Chodorov”, Liberty Fund Inc.
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The institution of taxation rests foursquare on the axiom that somebody must rule somebody else.
-- Frank ChodorovSource : Frank Chodorov (1980). “Fugitive essays: selected writings of Frank Chodorov”, Liberty Fund Inc.
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Taxes, after all, are dues that we pay for the privileges of membership in an organized society.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt -
The old liberal rebelled against taxation without responsibility, the new liberal wants the taxation as a handout without responsibility.
-- Fulton J. Sheen -
Democratic nation states remain far more capable of managing the circuit of coercion, taxation and legitimation than any transnational bodies.
-- Geoff Mulgan -
No taxes can be devised which are not more or less inconvenient and unpleasant.
-- George Washington -
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My first rule - the golden rule - ensures that over the economic cycle the Government will borrow only to invest, and that current spending will be met from taxation.
-- Gordon Brown -
Contrary to any claim of a systematically “neutral†effect of taxation on production, the consequence of any such shortening of roundabout methods of production is a lower output produced. The price that invariably must be paid for taxation, and for every increase in taxation, is a coercively lowered productivity that in turn reduces the standard of living in terms of valuable assets provided for future consumption. Every act of taxation necessarily exerts a push away from more highly capitalized, more productive production processes in the direction of a hand-to-mouth-existence.
-- Hans-Hermann Hoppe -
An expropriating property protector (the state, through taxation) is a contradiction in terms
-- Hans-Hermann Hoppe -
There are always principles to be depended upon in this matter of taxation ... Amidst the inconsistent, the bewildering representations offered, a certain number must be in accordance with true principles ...
-- Harriet Martineau -
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All taxation is an evil, but heavy taxes, indiscriminately levied on every everything are one of the greatest curses that can afflict a people
-- Henry Adams -
A lottery is a taxation on all of the fools in creation.
-- Henry Fielding -
Abolish all taxation save that upon land values.
-- Henry George -
The United States has a system of taxation by confession
-- Hugo Black -
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The separation of Church and State in everything relating to taxation should be absolute.
-- James A. Garfield -
A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species.
-- James Madison -
The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest amount of feathers with the least possible amount of hissing.
-- Jean-Baptiste Colbert -
Taxation being a burthen, must needs weigh lightest on each individual, when it bears upon all alike.
-- Jean-Baptiste Say -
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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.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
Taxation has its limitations as a method of achieving better economic distribution since for this purpose it is essentially remedial. We must also take a positive approach by finding new ways to spread ownership of future capital growth more broadly in our society.
-- John D. Rockefeller -
I would suggest to my honourable Friend that the foreign investor is at least as discouraged by high national debt for that, as all example shows, is the surest precursor of high taxation.
-- John James CowperthwaiteSource : Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council (p. 213), March 24, 1966.
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By operating independently of government aid, the churches . . . avoid the resentment of those who do not want to be forced to contribute to churches to which they do not belong and of their own members who do not welcome being forced to contribute through government taxation.
-- John M SwomleySource : John M. Swomley, Americans for Religious Liberty (1997). “Confronting church and state: memoirs of an activist”
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Should government refrain from regulation (taxation), the worthlessness of the money becomes apparent and the fraud can no longer be concealed.
-- John Maynard Keynes -
So far as 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.
-- John Quincy Adams -
Nearly everywhere monarchs raised themselves further above the level of the greatest nobles and buttressed their new pretensions to respect and authority with cannons and taxation.
-- John Roberts -
I return my tax bill without paying it. My reason for doing so is that women suffer taxation yet have not representation.
-- Lucy Stone -
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Greece is an extreme case: a country where both the level of spending and the level of taxation were unsustainable!
-- Malcolm Turnbull -
We have to change economic policy: create confidence, foster investment, cut the public deficit, restructure taxation and reform the labor laws.
-- Mariano RajoySource : "Will Spain Be the Next Greece?". Interview with Lalli Weymouth, www.slate.com. October 28, 2011.
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I prefer for government to err toward less regulation, lower taxation, and free markets. And I'm a radical free trader.
-- Mark McKinnon -
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success.
-- Mark Skousen -
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Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure.
-- Mark Skousen -
My expertise was in public finance, particularly corporate taxation, since I had worked at the US Treasury.
-- Merton Miller -
I am favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible.
-- Milton Friedman -
Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation.
-- Milton Friedman -
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Inflation is taxation without legislation.
-- Milton Friedman -
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.'
-- Murray Rothbard -
The officers of Congress, may come upon you now, fortified with all the terrors of paramount federal authority. Excisemen taxmen may come in multitudes; for the limitation of their numbers no man knows. They may, unless the general government be restrained ... go into your cellars and rooms, and search, ransack, and measure, everything you eat, drink, and wear.
-- Patrick Henry -
Printing money is merely taxation in another form. Rather than robbing citizens of their money, government robs their money of its purchasing power.
-- Peter SchiffSource : "The Fault Lines Emerge". www.321gold.com. March 28, 2009.
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Those jobs flee other states because of factors like excessive taxation, punitive regulation and frivolous lawsuits.
-- Rick Perry -
Taxation is robbery based on monopoly of weapons
-- Robert Anton Wilson -
The physical power to get the money does not seem to me a test of the right to tax. Might does not make right even in taxation. To hold that what the use of official authority may get the state may keep, and that if it cannot get hold of a nonresident stockholder it may hold the company as hostage for him, is strange constitutional doctrine to me.
-- Robert H. Jackson -
Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor. Seizing the results of someone's labor is equivalent to seizing hours from him and directing him to carry on various activities.
-- Robert NozickSource : Robert Nozick (1974). “Anarchy, state, and utopia”
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This is the Great Theatre of Life. Admission is free, but the taxation is mortal. You come when you can, and leave when you must. The show is continuous. Goodnight.
-- Robertson DaviesSource : Robertson Davies (1996). “The Cunning Man”, Penguin Group USA
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What we should have fought for was representation without taxation.
-- Sam Levenson -
The road to recovery is to stimulate small business and innovation by reducing taxation, regulation, and litigation.
-- Sandy Adams -
But we need to quit taxing people upon death. No taxation without respiration.
-- Steve King -
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The highest-income Americans don't need tax-free health insurance, mortgage interest deductions or deferred taxation on retirement funds.
-- Steven Rattner -
Taxation is just a sophisticated way of demanding money with menaces.
-- Terry Pratchett -
Taxes should be continued by annual or biennial reeactments, because a constant hold, by the nation, of the strings of the public purse is a salutary restraint from which an honest government ought not wish, nor a corrupt one to be permitted, to be free.
-- Thomas Jefferson -
Would it not be better to simplify the system of taxation rather than to spread it over such a variety of subjects and pass through so many new hands.
-- Thomas Jefferson -
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Our properties within our own territories [should not] be taxed or regulated by any power on earth but our own.
-- Thomas Jefferson -
The U.S. is the country that invented progressive taxation of income and of inherited wealth in the 1910s and 20s.
-- Thomas PikettySource : "Economist says U.S. inequality reaching "spectacular" heights". Interview with Alain Sherter, www.cbsnews.com. June 5, 2014.
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It is the duty of a good shepherd to shear his sheep, not to skin them.
-- Tiberius -
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I would suggest the taxation of all property equally whether church or corporation.
-- Ulysses S. Grant -
So vast a sum, receiving all the protection and benefits of the government, without bearing its proportion of the burdens and expenses of the same, will not be looked upon acquiescently by those who have to pay the taxes. . . . I would suggest the taxation of all property equally.
-- Ulysses S. Grant -
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.
-- Vilfredo Pareto -
All we have to do now is to inform the public that the payment of social security taxes is voluntary and watch the mass exodus.
-- Walter E. Williams -
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If you make any money, the government shoves you in the creek once a year with it in your pockets, and all that don't get wet you can keep.
-- Will Rogers -
Nothing is so well calculated to produce a death-like torpor in the country as an extended system of taxation and a great national debt.
-- William CobbettSource : William Cobbett's letter, February 10, 1804.
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Economy is the first and great article (economy such as I understand it) in my financial creed. The controversy between direct and indirect taxation holds a minor, though important place.
-- William E. Gladstone -
It (land value taxation) guarantees that no one dispossess fellow citizens by obtaining a disproportionate share of what nature provides for humanity.
-- William Vickrey -
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I think coercive taxation is theft, and government has a moral duty to keep it to a minimum.
-- William Weld -
A European currency will lead to member-nations transferring their sovereignty over financial and wage policies as well as in monetary affairs... It is an illusion to think that States can hold on to their autonomy over taxation policies.
-- Hans Tietmeyer -
If politicians get money to spend and don't have to be responsible for taxation, then of course that will bias their attitude toward more spending as opposed to cutting back on spending.
-- James M. BuchananSource : Source: www.aims.ca
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In any socialist government, they must destroy all alliances other than your alliance to the government, and they want the government to become your God. That for you to totally depend upon government. So we become slaves to government, through taxation, through regulation, through all kinds of restrictions, that makes us not free anymore.
-- Rafael Cruz -
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Taxation is the legitimate support of government.
-- Adolphe Thiers -
Throughout his life, Ronald Reagan believed America is capable of great things and its people could and would lead the way if left unburdened by taxation and regulation.
-- Bill Jenkins -
The welfare state is an enemy of private property. The excessive taxation used to support the welfare state is extremely dangerous.
-- Charles A. Murray -
We are looking for a Wealth Tax that will bring in sufficient revenue to justify having a wealth tax.
-- Dick Spring -
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The institution of taxation is not a civilized but a barbaric method to fund anything, because it amounts to nothing less than outright extortion, a gross violation of human liberty.
-- Tibor R. MachanSource : "What's Wrong with Taxation?". mises.org. November 22, 2002.
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Inflation is a form of hidden taxation which it is almost impossible to measure.
-- John J. Beckley -
Peace and prosperity are inversely proportional to the level of taxation.
-- John Pugsley