Taxation

"As a taxpayer, you are required to be fully in compliance with the United States Tax Code, which is currently the size and weight of the Budweiser Clydesdales."
        --Dave Barry

"Taxation with representation ain't so hot either."
        --Gerald Barzan

"It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder."
        --Frederic Bastiat

"A hand from Washington will be stretched out and placed upon every manīs business; the eye of the federal inspector will be in every manīs counting house.... The law will of necessity have inquisical features, it will provide penalties, it will create complicated machinery. Under it, men will be hauled into courts distant from their homes. Heavy fines imposed by distant and unfamiliar tribunals will constantly menace the taxpayer. An army of federal inspectors, spies, and detectives will descend upon the state."
        --Richard E. Byrd, Virginia House Speaker, 1910, predicting the consequences of a federal income tax

"Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery."
        --Calvin Coolidge

"The collection of taxes which are not absolutely required, which do not beyond reasonable doubt contribute to the public welfare, is only a species of legalized larceny. The wise and correct course to follow in taxation is not to destroy those who have already secured success, but to create conditions under which everyone will have a better chance to be successful."
        --Calvin Coolidge

"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."
        --Calvin Coolidge

"No matter what anyone may say about making the rich and the corporations pay taxes, in the end they come out of the people who toil."
        --Calvin Coolidge

"To tax the community for the advantage of a class is not protection it is plunder."
        --Benjamin Disraeli

"The Declaration of Independence, the words that launched our nation-1,300 words. The Bible, the word of God-773,000 words. The Tax Code, the words of politicians-7,000,000 words-and growing!"
        --Steve Forbes

"In this world, nothing is certain but death and taxes."
        --Benjamin Franklin

"Iīm proud to pay taxes in the United States; the only thing is, I could be just as proud for half the money."
        --Arthur Godfrey

"To lay taxes to provide for the general welfare of the United States, that is to say, 'to lay taxes for the purpose of providing for the general welfare.' For the laying of taxes is the power, and the general welfare the purpose for which the power is to be exercised. They are not to lay taxes ad libitum for any purpose they please; but only to pay the debts or provide for the welfare of the Union."
        --Thomas Jefferson

"The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation."
        --Vladimir I. Lenin

"The power to tax involves the power to destroy."
        --John Marshall

"Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages."
        --H. L. Mencken

"When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that an old source is abandoned. It merely means that the politicians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had only one before."
        --H. L. Mencken

"Not one cent should be raised unless it is in accord with the law."
        --Napoleon

"Capital punishment is when Washington comes up with a new tax."
        --Van Panopoulos

"We need true tax reform that will at least make a start toward restoring for our children the American Dream that wealth is denied to no one, that each individual has the right to fly as high as his strength and ability will take him. . . . But we cannot have such reform while our tax policy is engineered by people who view the tax as a means of achieving changes in our social structure."
        --Ronald Reagan

"Have we the courage and the will to face up to the immorality and discrimination of the progressive tax, and demand a return to traditional proportionate taxation? . . . Today in our country the tax collector's share is 37 cents of every dollar earned. Freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp. "
        --Ronald Reagan

"The taxpayer; thatīs someone who works for the federal government, but doesnīt have to take a civil service examination"
        --Ronald Reagan

"Are you entitled to the fruits of your labor or does government have some presumptive right to spend and spend and spend?"
        --Ronald Reagan

"Government does not tax to get the money it needs; government always finds a need for the money it gets."
        --Ronald Reagan

"I just wanted to speak to you about something from the Internal Revenue Code. It is the last sentence of section 509A of the code and it reads: 'For purposes of paragraph 3, an organization described in paragraph 2 shall be deemed to include an organization described in section 501C-4, 5, or 6, which would be described in paragraph 2 if it were an organization described in section 501C-3.' And that's just one sentence out of those fifty-seven feet of books."
        --Ronald Reagan

"Those tax-exempt bonds were put in so that a town or a state or a government could sell more bonds than it ought to."
        --Will Rogers

"How is the government going to get the extra taxes? Out of the rich -- or just out of the poor, as usual?"
        --Will Rogers

"The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has."
        --Will Rogers

"Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle."
        --Franklin D. Roosevelt

"Congress will ever exercise their powers to levy as much money as the people can pay. They will not be restrained from direct taxes by the consideration that necessity does not require them."
        --John Smith

"I don't know if I can live on my income or not -- the government won't let me try it."
        --Bob Thaves, in the comic strip "Frank & Ernest"

"Mr. Speaker, in 1848, Karl Marx said, a progressive income tax is needed to transfer wealth and power to the state. Thus, Marx's Communist Manifesto had as its major economic tenet a progressive income tax. Think about it, 1848 Karl Marx, Communism. Now, if that is not enough to tax our history, 1999, United States of America, progressive income tax socialism. Stone cold socialism. I say it is time to replace the progressive income tax with a national retail sales tax, and it is time to abolish the IRS, my colleagues. I yield back all the rules, regulations, fear, and intimidation of our current system."
        --Rep. James Traficant

"What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin."
        --Mark Twain