quotations about taxes
It puzzles me that the well-off complain so much about taxes when they pay so little relative to their wealth.
MOLLY IVINS
Baltimore Sun, September 5, 2002
Indoors or out, no one relaxes
In March, that month of wind and taxes,
The wind will presently disappear,
The taxes last us all the year.
OGDEN NASH
"Thar She Blows", Versus
Taxes are like and unlike the rain, they fall upon the just and the unjust; most hardly upon the just because they will not resort to devious ways to escape the imposition.
PAUL CARUS
The Open Court
There were really only two men I knew who ever got a laugh out of paying their income taxes. One was cheating the government and getting away with it. The other had a sick sense of humor and would probably have set up a concession stand at the Boston Tea Party and sold sugar cubes and lemon slices.
ERMA BOMBECK
At Wit's End
Taxes are nothing but a game of pick pocket.
JOSEPH BONKOWSKI
Quote Me
There is one difference between a tax collector and a taxidermist--the taxidermist leaves the hide.
MORTIMER CAPLAN
attributed, Taxes: The Tax Magazine, 1970
We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
Young Statesman
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 COBBETT
letter, February 10, 1804
The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man: Your money, or your life. And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat. The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the road side, and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful.
LYSANDER SPOONER
No Treason
In levying taxes and in shearing sheep it is well to stop when you get down to the skin.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
When the super-rich use offshore tax havens to avoid paying what they owe in taxes, they're reneging on their duties as citizens. It seems only fair to me that the consequences of that kind of tax avoidance ought to be loss of citizenship.
ROBERT REICH
Common Dreams, May 23, 2007
Taxes are an investment in America.
BILL GATES
attributed, Take This Job and Ship It