"The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax."
- Albert Einstein
* * *
"But nothing in this life is certain but death and taxes."
- Benjamin Franklin
* * *
"Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages."
- H.L. Mencken
* * *
"The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that carries any reward."
- John Maynard Keynes
* * *
"When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income."
- Plato, The Republic
* * *
"The politicians don't just want your money. They want your soul. They want you to be worn down by taxes until you are
dependent and helpless. When you subsidize poverty and failure, you get more of both."
- James Dale Davidson, National Taxpayers Union
* * *
"The IRS spends God knows how much of your tax money on these toll-free information hot lines staffed by IRS employees,
whose idea of a dynamite tax tip is that you should print neatly. If you ask them a real tax question, such as how you
can cheat, they're useless. So, for guidance, you want to look to big business. Big business never pays a nickel in taxes,
according to Ralph Nader, who represents a big consumer organization that never pays a nickel in taxes... "
- Dave Barry, Sweating Out Taxes
* * *
"I hate the IRS. I'd like to break their damn necks."
- Rep. James Traficant, D-Ohio, convicted of tax evasion. (US News & World Report, April 22, 2002)
* * *
"Tax reform means 'Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that fellow behind the tree.'"
- Russell Long
* * *
"Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as satisfying as an income tax refund."
- F. J. Raymond
* * *
"Look, we play the Star Spangled Banner before every game. You want us to pay income taxes, too?"
- Bill Veeck, Chicago White Sox
* * *
"I'm proud to be paying taxes in the United States. The only thing is I could be just as proud for half the money. "
- Arthur Godfrey
* * *
"Let's talk about how to fill out your 1984 tax return. Here's an often overlooked accounting technique that can save you
thousands of dollars: For several days before you put it in the mail, carry your tax return around under your armpit. No
IRS agent is going to want to spend hours poring over a sweat-stained document. So even if you owe money, you can put in
for an enormous refund and the agent will probably give it to you, just to avoid an audit. What does he care? It's not his
money."
- Dave Barry, Sweating Out Taxes
* * *
"I see a good deal of talk from Washington about lowering taxes. I hope they do get 'em lowered enough so people can
afford to pay 'em."
- Will Rogers
* * *
"Baseball is a skilled game. It's America's game -- it, and high taxes."
- Will Rogers
* * *
"Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors and miss."
- Lazarus Long, Time Enough for Love
* * *
"All the taxes paid over a lifetime by the average American are spent by the government in less than a second."
- Jim Fiebig
* * *
"All the big corporations depreciate their possessions, and you can, too, provided you use them for business purposes.
For example, if you subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, a business-related newspaper, you can deduct the cost of your
house, because, in the words of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger in a landmark 1979 tax decision: "Where
else are you going to read the paper? Outside? What if it rains?"
- Dave Barry, Sweating Out Taxes
* * *
"Nowadays a citizen can hardly distinguish between a tax and a fine, except that the fine is generally much lighter."
- G. K. Chesterton
* * *
"I make a fortune from criticizing the policy of the government, and then hand it over to the government in taxes to keep
it going."
- George Bernard Shaw
* * *
"The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the
smallest amount of hissing."
- Jean Baptiste Colbert
* * *
"Why does a small tax increase cost you two hundred dollars and a substantial tax cut save you thirty cents?"
- Peg Bracken
* * *
"Man is not like other animals in the ways that are really significant: Animals have instincts, we have taxes."
-Erving Goffman
* * *
"Avoid falsehoods like the plague except in matters of taxation, which do not count, since here your are not lying to
take someone else's goods, but to prevent your own from being unjustly seized."
- Giovanni Morelli
* * *
"And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed."
- St. Luke 2:1
* * *
"Continuing to raise taxes to feed the bureaucratic beast can only result in
devouring the means and motivation of our people."
- Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, 1/2/03
* * *
"An economy hampered by restrictive tax
rates will never produce enough revenues to balance our budget-just as it
will never produce enough jobs or profits."
- JFK
* * *
"Read my lips--NO NEW TAXES!"
- George Herbert Walker Bush, November 1988
* * *
"Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others."
- Oscar Wilde
* * *
"There is one difference between a tax collector and a taxidermist- the taxidermist leaves the hide."
- Mortimer Caplin
* * *
"Taxation without representation is tyranny."
- James Otis
* * *
"Taxation WITH representation ain't so hot either."
- Gerald Barzan
* * *
"What we should have fought for was representation without taxation."
- Sam Levenson, You Don't Have to Be in 'Who's Who' to Know What's What
* * *
"They say that the wages of sin is death. But after taxes its just a tired feeling really."
- Paula Poundstone
* * *
"The taxpayer -- that's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take the civil service examination."
- Ronald Reagan
* * *
"The only thing I had on my mind was tennis and sometimes girls."
- Boris Becker, three-time Wimbledon champion, expaining to a Munich court why he did not pay $3 million in taxes
between 1991 and 1993. (Time, November 4, 2002)
* * *
"The Internal Revenue Service is the authoritarian means to paternalist ends. A government that is anxious to give alms to as
many people as possible is even more anxious to commandeer their earnings. Increasingly, the average American's guilt or
innocence is left to the eye of the tax auditor, not to the citizen's actual behavior. Federal tax policy is now largely
oppression in the name of revenue maximization.
"The U.S. Treasury Department defines a tax as 'a compulsory payment for which no specfic benefit it received in return.'
No matter how many taxes a person pays, or what polititians promise, the taxpayer is not irrevocably entitled to a single
benefit from the government. The level of taxation is thus a stark measure of government's financial power over the individual
- a precise guage of the subjugation of the citizen to the financial demands of the state."
- James Bovard, Lost Rights, 1994
* * *
"Tax rates measure the nation's most important and costly entitlement program - how much of a person's income polititians
are entitled to take. According to the Tax Foundation, the average citizen had to work 123 days in 1992 to pay his taxes
- from January 1 through May 3... If government announced a program of forced labor, and conscripted every taxpayer for
over a third of a year without compensation, there would likely be a national revolt. But as most taxes are seized through
payroll tax withholding, most citizens have little opportunity for resistance."
- James Bovard, Lost Rights, 1994
* * *
"[T]he whole notion of using the tax system as a method of redistributing wealth rests on a fallacy - namely, that wealth is
money, and that all one has to do to transfer wealth is to transfer money.
"The trouble with that hypothosis is that money is nothing more than a medium of exchange. Real wealth is the total productive
output of the economy in the form of services and goods, which are in turn the product of the energy, resources, and talents
of the people who produce them. Thus merely passing money around does little to change a nation's real productive output or
wealth, nor does it change the inherent 'wealth capacity' of idividual citizens. All it does is reduce the real value of the
money itself, through inflation."
- Warren T. Brookes, The Economy of the Mind, 1982
* * *
"The attempt to redistribute wealth by redistributing money through the progressive tax tables only winds up keeping the
poor poor, the rich rich, and the middle class struggling even harder to keep up with taxation."
- Warren T. Brookes, The Economy of the Mind, 1982
* * *
"Tax all the luxuries of the rich and you don't have enough money to buy all the Vatican treasures - it is the middle class
who are shouldering the great economic load today, for the simple reason that the rich, if you took away everything they
had, could relieve the world's poor for a single week."
- William F. Buckley, Jr., National Review, April 18, 1967
* * *
"A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within. The essential cause of Rome's
decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes,
her consuming wars."
- William & Ariel Durant, Caesar and Christ, 1944
* * *
"[F]or two generations the government has been more important than the family in setting our national tax policy. Back in
1947 we had almost no taxes on an average worker with a wife and two children. The deduction per child as a share of average
income was the equivalent of over $6,000 in today's money. The Social Security tax was so small - $30 a year - that it was
not even noticed. Today taxes are so high they force many mothers to work. Today's taxes are anti-child, anti-family and
anti-work. Furthermore, our tax system is anti-savings, anti-investment and anti-jobs."
- Newt Gingrich, 1990
* * *
"The graduated tax is a confiscatory tax. It's effect, and to a large extent it's aim, is to bring down all men to a
common level."
- Barry Goldwater, Conscience of a Conservative, 1964
* * *
"Lyndon Johnson's Great Society was built on an invigorating, exciting, but nonetheless erroneous, idea that government
sharing can end poverty and urban squalor by taxing away resources from the 'haves' and giving them to the 'have nots.' As
usual, the resources were taxed away from middle-class Americans and, except in the rare instance, never got to the
lower-income classes. Giant federal bureaucracies were established to run programs and dispense funds that would lead to
this Great Society, and by the time the federal tax dollars got through the bureaucratic 'in' and 'out' baskets there
were left only nickels and dimes. The war on poverty became a war on the middle class - and on the poor."
- Jack Kemp, An American Renaissance, 1979
* * *
"Those who have convinced themselves that higher taxes are a cure for inflation naturally view our tax-rate reduction
proposals as inflationary. Yet reduced tax rates are inflationary only if they result in larger budget deficits and those
larger deficits are financed by creating more money. A constructive reduction of steep marginal tax rates can increase the
tax base by increasing the volume of work, savings, and investment, and by reducing the incentive to evade taxes. A
growth-oriented tax policy also reduces the clamor for federal spending to support incomes of the unemployed or otherwise
needy."
- Jack Kemp, An American Renaissance, 1979
* * *
"It is obvious that a graduated tax is a direct penalty imposed on saving and industry, a direct premium offered to idleness
and extravagance. It discourages the very habits and qualities which it is most in the interest of the State to foster, and it
is certain to operate forcibly where fortunes approach the limits at which a higher scale of taxation begins. It is a strong
inducement at that period, either to cease to work or to cease to save. It is at the same time perfectly arbitrary. When the
principle of taxing all fortunes on the same rate of computation is abandoned, no definite rule or principle remains. At what
point the higher scale is to begin, or to what degree it is to be raised, depends wholly on the policy of Governments and the
balance of parties. The ascending scale may at first be very moderate, but it may at any time, when fresh taxes are required,
be made more severe, till it reaches or approaches the point of confiscation."
- W.E.H. Lecky, Democracy and Liberty, 1896
* * *
"Highly graduated taxation realises most completely the supreme danger of democracy, creating a state of things in which one
class imposes on another burdens which it is not asked to share, and impels the State into vast schemes of extravagance,
under the belief that the whole cost will be thrown upon others."
- W.E.H. Lecky, Democracy and Liberty, 1896
* * *
"When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that an old source is abandoned. It merely means that
the polititians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had only one before."
- H.L. Mencken, Evening Sun, November 13, 1925
* * *
"A Progressive is one who is in favor of more taxes instead of less, more bureaus and jobholders, more paternalism and
meddling, more regulation of private affairs and less liberty. In general, he would be inclined to regard the repeal of
any tax as outrageous."
- H.L. Mencken, Evening Sun, January 19, 1926
* * *
"Jerry Brown may not win the Democratic presidential nomination, but he deserves a lot of credit for making the 'flat tax' a
hot topic of national debate. This is an idea whose time has come... ...the fact is that the progressive income tax is
straight out of Karl Marx's Communist doctrine. Marx believed that the state ought to confiscate the incomes of successful
people in order to subsidize others who had become dependent on the state. The elementary point bears repeating: Communism
didn't work; it destroyed incentive and made everybody dependent on the state.... Maybe Gov. Brown doesn't go far enough
with a flat tax. A case can be made that the federal income tax ought to be abolished entirely. After all our government
functioned quite nicely before the 16th amendment was ratified in 1913. At the very least, the federal income tax ought to
be simplified. The simplest way to go is to pass a flat tax."
- Oliver North, April 15, 1992
* * *
"The federal government of the United States of America takes away between a fifth and a quarter of all our money every year.
That is eight times the Islamic zakat, the almsgiving required of believers by the Koran; it is double the tithe of the
medieval church and twice the royal tribute that the prophet Samuel warned the Israelites against when they wanted him to
annoint a ruler."
- P.J. O'Rourke, Parliment of Whores, 1991
* * *
"[A]ll tax revenue is the result of holding a gun to somebody's head. Not paying taxes is against the law. If you don't pay
your taxes, you'll be fined. If you don't pay the fine, you'll be jailed. If you try to escape from jail, you'll be shot."
- P.J. O'Rourke, Parliment of Whores, 1991
* * *
"This isn't a Keynesian Recovery produced by big-spending bureaucrats tinkering with aggregate demand. In fact, I don't know
of a single Keynesian who predicted it. Instead, this recovery was created by the incentives of tax rate reductions, which
shifted resources away from government back to American producers, savers, and investors."
- Ronald Reagan, Signing a message to Congress, 1984
* * *
"We don't have a trillion dollar debt because we haven't taxed enough; we have a trillion dollar debt because we spend too much."
- Ronald Reagan, Address to the National Association of Realtors, 1982
* * *
"May I just say, in the request for economic literacy, high tax rates don't soak the rich, they only create more tax shelters
or an outright capital drain. Reducing high tax rates provides incentives to get more people paying taxes again."
- Ronald Reagan, Address to the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, 1982
* * *
"Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion, by threatening dire penalties should the income not be forthcoming. That
coercion is known as 'taxation'... Taxation is theft, purely and simply, even though it is theft on a grand and colossal
scale which no acknowledged criminals could hope to match."
- Murry Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty, 1982
* * *
"The countries today where growth rates are strongest, inflation the lowest and prosperity most secure are not those
dominated by the heavy hand of government, but [those] invigorated by the incentives of low tax rates, rising competition,
sound money and free trade... ...permit government to continue exceeding [its] ... mandate in the name of doing good -
creating programs we cannot afford based on revenues that are not there, keeping tax rates on risk capital higher here
than any other industrial nation - and we will end up hurting those who need help the most, impoverishing every taxpayer,
fatally weakening the financial moorings of this country, and losing the very freedoms we hold most dear."
- William Simon, Speech at Adelphi University, 1992
* * *
"There is no art which one government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people."
- Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776
* * *
"[W]e should regard... every cent of tax as needing justification... All taxation, beyond what is necessary for an economical
administration of good government, is either luxurious or wasteful."
- William Graham Sumner, Essays, 1934, Vol. 1
* * *
"...the only act of governance that the New Age Liberal was capable of was raising taxes. He believed in taxing the middle
class to the utmost reaches of the tolerable, though even here he was tenative. He denoted the middle class as 'the rich' and
he preferred to tax them surreptitiously through tax bracket creep."
- R. Emmmett Tyrrell, Jr., The Conservative Crack-Up, 1992
* * *
"An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, the power to destroy."
- Daniel Webster, Argument in McCullough V. Maryland, Supreme Court, 1819
* * *
"The person who is faced with a tax bill to finance interest charges... will reckon only on the simply observed fact that
income that he or she might otherwise use is being taken away in taxes."
- James Buchanan, Essays on the Political Economy, 1989
* * *
"The federal government has embarked on a debt-financed spending spree that cannot be permanently sustained. The fact that
the government cannot go bankrupt in any sense analogous to a person or business firm does nothing to modify the central
proposition. Government's ultimate taxing and money-creation powers can, of course, guarantee that all nominally valued
debt claims will be honored, but neither an ever-increasing interest share of tax revenues nor an inflationary monetization
of nominal debt claims offers a viable option for permanent reform."
- James Buchanan, Essays on the Political Economy, 1989
* * *
"We have been led to look upon taxation as merely a problem of public financing: How much does the government need? We have
boon led to discount and often to forget altogether, the bearing of taxation on the problem of individual freedom. We have
been persuaded that the government has an unlimited claim on the wealth of the people, and that the only pertinent question
is what portion of its claim the government should exercise. The American taxpayer, I think, has lost confidence in his
claim to his money. He has been handicapped in resisting high taxes by the feeling that he is, in the nature of things,
obliged to accommodate whatever need for his wealth government chooses to assert."
- Barry Goldwater, Conscience of a Conservative, 1964
* * *
"It is only through... [a] determined assault on the principle of unlimited government that American people will obtain
relief from high taxes, and will start making progress towards regaining their freedom.... The need for 'economic growth'
that we hear so much about these days will be achieved, not by the government harnessing the nation's economic forces, but
by emancipating them. By reducing taxes and spending we will not only return to the individual the means with which he can
assert his freedom and diginity, but also guarantee to the nation the economic strength that will always be its ultimate
defense against foreign foes."
- Barry Goldwater, Conscience of a Conservative, 1964
* * *
"...[H]igh taxes, for which government Welfarism is so largely responsible, is the biggest obstacle to fund raising by
private charities."
- Barry Goldwater, Conscience of a Conservative, 1964
* * *
"What it [the income tax] became, finally, was a siphon gradually inserted into the pockets of the general public. Imposed
to popular huzzas as a class tax, the income tax was gradually turned into a mass tax in a jiujitsu turnaround..."
- Ferdinand Lundberg, The Rich And The Super-Rich,
* * *
"Our system of taxation is based upon voluntary assessment and payment, not upon distraint."
- The Supreme Court, Flora v. United States, 362 U.S. 145, pg. 176
* * *
"The IRS' primary task is to collect taxes under a voluntary compliance system."
- Jerome Kurtz, Internal Revenue Annual Report, 1980
* * *
"Our tax system is based on individual self-assessment and voluntary compliance."
- Mortimer Caplin, Internal Revenue Audit Manual, 1975
* * *
"Each year American taxpayers voluntarily file their tax returns and make a special effort to pay the taxes they owe."
- Johnnie M. Walters, Internal Revenue 1040 Booklet, 1971
* * *
"Because the American tax system is based on voluntary compliance and self-assessment, each year taxpayers make their own
determination of their tax liability and file returns reporting the correct tax."
- WELCOME to the United States of America, Form 1-357, Re. 7-19-80, the United States Department of Justice, Immigration
and Naturalization Service
* * *
"We hear much about the 'voluntariness' of our tax system, and there is much to be said for it. But frequently, the taxes
which are 'voluntary' paid are paid because of the roughest kind of threats and the apparent prospect of great cost and
great retribution facing those who choose to disagree with IRS. Tax collection should be done with a minimum of fear,
threats and intimidation and harassment."
- Senator Edward V. Long
* * *
"The results of the work of the special agents is not measured solely by the number of criminal cases investigated or
prosecutions recommended. Of paramount importance is the increase in voluntary compliance by the taxpaying public
resulting from the impact of these investigations and subsequent successful prosecution of violators. Honest taxpayers,
who comprise the vast majority, thus are reassured and potential tax fraud perpetrators receive a deterrent warning.
Therefore, in a relentless effort to further the improvement of voluntary compliance, the tax fraud investigation
program is directed toward the identification, investigation and prosecution of tax fraud cases in all sections of the
country, in all strata of society, and involving all types of taxes."
- Commissioner of Internal Revenue's Annual Report, 1965
* * *
"We all should understand that the Service is not simply running a direct enforcement business aimed at making $2 billion in
additional assessments ... Our chief mission is to encourage and achieve more effective voluntary compliance."
- Mortimer Caplin, Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 1963
* * *
"Let there be no question about this. If we wish to avoid having a police state in America, we had better wake up and do
something about it soon."
- Senator Edward Long, after the Senate Subcommittee on Administrative Practice and Procedure revealed 6 instances where IRS
agents had opened the mail and wiretapped the telephones of suspected tax evaders, 1965
* * *
"No tax dodger should ever be elected to public office."
- Judge Nelson S. Corn (later convicted of tax evasion)
* * *
"Last year was the 50th anniversary of the income tax amendment to the Constitution, but the Internal Revenue Service didn't
seem to get any birthday cakes."
- Mortimer Caplin, Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 1964
* * *
"(A)fter taxing companies when they earn their profits, the Internal Revenue
Service now taxes individual investors who receive the profits as dividends.
This is double taxation on the same profits. Shareholders are in effect
penalized for investing in our nation's economy and businesses.
"...The dividend tax falls hardest on retirees. Abolishing taxes on
corporate dividends is not a 'tax break for the wealthy,' as Sen. Tom
Daschle would like voters to believe. It is tax break for the hard working
Americans who built this great nation, defended us in time of war, and
risked their lives in the fight for freedom. In fact, almost half of all tax
savings under the dividend exclusion in 2003 will go to taxpayers 65 and
older, our parents and grandparents."
- Charlie Jarvis of the United Seniors Association
* * *
"The IRS, at the request of other federal agencies, opens tax investigations against citizens who are not
suspected of tax delinquency. Last year, nearly thirty thousand income tax returns were turned over to the
federal agencies having nothing to do with tax collection, but which sought the information for purposes of
their own."
- Senator Frank Church, speech October 20, 1975
* * *
"The "greenback" decisions of the Court have also aroused political opposition. Whether Congress should
issue legal-tender notes to be used as money, as bank-notes are, is a public financial question to be
determined by the polical department of the Government. Politically the country is greatly divided upon
this question. The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the constitutional power of Congress to do this.
The Court first decided (1870) that this power did not rest with Congress. But th Court was soon changed
in it's personel by the creation of a new justiceship and by the filling of a vacancy, and a new case
was gotten up. The opinion of the two new judges was already known from their having passed similar
cases in the lower courts, and when the new decision came the majority of the judges held that Congress,
in the exercise of war power, might issue legal-tender notes. Later, in 1884, in still another case,
the Court held, with only one dissenting voice, that this power rests with Congress in time of peace
as well as in time of war. This decision is thought to be dangerous by some whose political and
financial opinions were offended by it.
"Previous to the campaign of 1896, the Populist party and many Democratic convetions in the States
demanded a national Income Tax, and, in 1894, a Democratic Congress passed such a tax. The Supreme
Court, by a vote of five to four, one judge having changed his mind, declared it unconstitutional and
set it aside, thus reversing previous decisions on the subject. This offended the Democrats, and in
1896 the Democratic Convention, like the Republicans in 1860. denounced the decision, saying that it
was contrary to "the uniform decisions of that Court for nearly one hundred years," the Court having
sustained objections to the law "which had been previously overruled by the ablest judges who have
ever sat on that bench." The Democrats also denounced "government by injunction as a new and highly
dangerous form of oppression by which Federal judges, in contempt of the law of the States and rights
of citizens, become at once legislators, judges, and executioners."
"The reversal of the Supreme Court's decision in the legal-tender cases revealed the weak point in it's
organization. It is within the power of Congress and the President to "pack" the Court, if they have a
mind to do so. The number of Court can be increased from nine to fifteen, or to any other convenient
number. If Congress and the President are determined to do what the Court asserts to be unconstitutional
they have only to reorganize the Court by increasing the membership and by filling up the court with
judges who will give the desired opinion. If the opinions of the President's new appointees to the
Court can be known in advance, almast any case that it is desired to have reversed could be reversed
in this way. This would of course impair the usefulness of the Court, and while this manner of controlling
it by political legislation is possible it is hardly probable. The respect of the Americans for law and
for this their highest legal tribunal may be depended upon to restrain action in this direction. There
should be some way by which the sovereign will of the people can work out it's purposes, even against
the obstacles of court decisions. The Court must be, in the last resort, amenable to the will of the
people.
"As national judges may declare a State law unconstitutional, so may a State judge declare a national
law unconstitutional. He may be overruled in this decision by a national court on appeal, but if a
State ciruit judge, or even a justice of the peace, finds a national law in his way in the trial of a
case and if, in his judgement, the law is unconstitutional, it is his right, or rather his duty, to
say so. If he does not judge aright there is a chance for a higher court to say so.
- James Albert Woodburn, The American Republic and Its Government, 1903
* * *
"While Congress was snoozing, the American taxpayers were losing."
- Senator Bob Dole
* * *
"We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business?"
- Will Rogers
* * *
"In 1950, the average family of four paid 2% of its earnings to federal taxes. Today it pays 24%."
- William R. Mattox, Jr.
* * *
"In a recent conversation with an official at the Internal Revenue Service, I was amazed when he told me that
'If the taxpayers of this country ever discover that the IRS operates on 90% bluff the entire system will collapse.'"
- Senator Henry Bellmon, 1969
* * *
"The Tax Code, once you get to know it, embodies all the essence of life: greed, politics, goodness, charity."
- Sheldon Cohen (former IRS Commissioner)
* * *
"It's a game. We [tax lawyers] teach the rich how to play it so they can stay rich - and the IRS keeps changing the rules
so we can keep getting rich teaching them."
- John Grisham
* * *
"An income tax form is like a laundry list - either way you lose your shirt."
- Fred Allen
* * *
"If you get up early, work late, and pay your taxes, you will get ahead - if you strike oil."
- J. Paul Getty
* * *
"Though tax records are generally looked upon as a nuisance, the day may come when historians will realize that tax
records tell the real story behind civilized society."
- Charles Adams
* * *
"There can be no question that one who files a return under oath is a witness within the meaning of the [5th] Amendment."
- United States Court of Appeals, Sullivan v. United States, 1926
* * *
"The information revealed in the preparation and filing of an income tax return is, for Fifth Amendment analysis, the
testimony of a 'witness' as that term is used herein."
- United States Supreme Court, Garner v. United States, 1976
* * *
"To lay with one hand the power of the government on the property of the citizen, and with the other to bestow it on
favored individuals ...is none the less robbery because it is done under the forms of law and is called taxation."
- United States Supreme Court, Loan Association v. Topeka, 1874
* * *
"By means which the law permits, a taxpayer has the right to decrease the amount of what otherwise would be his taxes, or
altogether to avoid them."
- United States Supreme Court, Gregory v. Helvering, 1934
* * *
"Only the rare taxpayer would be likely to know that he could refuse to produce his records to IRS agents... Who would believe the ironic truth that the
cooperative taxpayer fares much worse than the individual who relies upon his constitutional rights"
- Judge Cummings, United States 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, United States v. Dickerson, 1969
* * *
"... the key question is: can we define 'income' in a fair and reasonably straightforward manner? Unfortunately we have not yet succeeded in doing so."
- Shirey Peterson, former IRS Commissioner, April 1993
* * *
"I don't like the income tax. Every time we talk about these taxes we get around to the idea of 'from each according to his capacity and to each according
to his needs.' That's socialism. It's written into the Communist Manifesto. Maybe we ought to see that every person who gets a tax return receives a copy
of the Communist Manifesto."
- T. Coleman Andrews, Commissioner of Internal Revenue, May 25, 1956, in U.S. News & World Report
* * *
"Our federal tax system is, in short, utterly impossible, utterly unjust and completely counterproductive, reeks with injustice and is fundamentally
un-American... it has earned a rebellion and it's time we rebelled."
- President Ronald Reagan, May 1983
* * *
"If no information or return is filed, Internal Revenue Service cannot assess you."
- Gary Makovski, Special IRS Agent, testifying under oath in U.S. v. Lloyd
* * *
"Let me point out this now. Your income tax is 100 percent voluntary tax, and your liquor tax is 100 percent enforced tax. Now, the situation is as
different as night and day. Consequently, your same rules just will not apply..."
- Dwight E. Avis, former head of the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Division of the IRS, testifying before a
House Ways and Means subcommittee in 1953
* * *
"The IRS is an extrodinary example of the end justifying the means. The means of this agency is growth. It is interesting
that the revenue officers within the IRS refer to taxpayers as 'inventory.' The IRS embodies the political realities of
the selfish human desire to dominate others. Thus the end of this gigantic pretense of officialdom is power, pure and
simple. The meek may inherit the earth, but they will never receive a promotion in an agency where efficiency is measured
by the number of seizures of taxpayers' property and by the number of citizens and businesses driven into bankruptcy."
- Congressman George Hansen, To Harass Our People, 1984
* * *
"I have sat on many a promotion panel where the first question of panel members was 'How many seizures have you made?'"
- Joseph R. Smith, 18-year IRS agent, testifying before Congress
* * *
"The agency that is so strict on the way Americans keep their books cannot even pass a finacial audit."
- Senator Ted Stevens
* * *
"This [audit] was made extremely difficult because [IRS] existing systems were not designed to provide reliable financial information...
on their operations."
- Comptroller Bowsher, Government Accounting Office, on the first-ever audit of the IRS in 1993
* * *
"Eight decades of amendments... to [the] code have produced a virtually impenetrable maze... The rules are unitelligible to most citizens...
The rules are equally mysterious to many government employees who are charged with administering and enforcing the law."
- Shirley Peterson, former IRS Commissioner, April 14, 1993
* * *
"The wages of the average American worker, after inflation and taxes, have decreasesd 17% since 1973, the only Western industrial nation
to so suffer."
- Martin Gross, author of The Tax Racket: Government Extortion From A to Z, about Social Security
* * *
"When you pay Social Security taxes, you are in no way making provision for your own retirement. You are paying the pensions of those
who are already retired. Once you understand this, you see that whether you will get the benefits you are counting on when you retire
depends on whether Congress will levy enough taxes, borrow enough, or print enough money..."
- W. Allen Wallis, former Chairman of the 1975 Advisory Council on Social Security, May 27, 1976
* * *
"There is no prospect that today's younger workers will receive all the Social Security and Medicare benefits currently promised them."
- Dorcas Hardy, former Social Security Commissioner, quoted in the December 1995 Reader's Digest
* * *
"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, Professor of Economics (George Mason University), January 24, 1996
* * *
"The Constitution prohibits any direct tax, unless in proportion to numbers as ascertained by the census... [and] ... prohibits Congress from
laying a direct tax on the revenue from property of the citizen without regard to state lines..."
- United States Supreme Court, Pollack v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Company, 1895
* * *
"... [the 16th Amendment] conferred no new power of taxation... [and] ...prohibited the... power of income taxation possessed by Congress from the
beginning from being taken out of the category of indirect taxation to which it inherently belonged..."
- United States Supreme Court, Stanton v. Baltic Mining, 1916
* * *
"Because of what appears to be a lawful command on the surface, many citizens, because of their respect for what appears to be law, are
cunningly coerced into waiving their rights due to ignorance."
- United States Supreme Court, U.S. v. Minker, 350 US 179 at 187
* * *
"No State shall... coin money; emit bills of credit; make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts..."
- United States Constitution, Article 1, Section 10, Clause 1
* * *
"... bank records are not the depositor's private papers and having given the information to the bank, the depositor has no
legitimate expectation of continues privacy... Records of an individual's accounts with banks are not the individual's private
papers protected against compulsory production by the 4th Amendment, but instead are the business records of the banks."
- United States Supreme Court, U.S. v. Miller
* * *
"100% of what is collected is absorbed soley by interest on the Federal Debt ... all individual income tax
revenues are gone before one nickel is spent on the services taxpayers expect from government."
- Grace Commission Report, submitted to President Ronald Reagan on January 15, 1984
* * *
"Of all the contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effective than that which deludes them with paper money."
- Daniel Webster
* * *
"All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America rise, not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue,
so much as from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation."
- John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, 1787
* * *
"Gold is still the ultimate store of wealth. It's the world's only true money. And there isn't much of it to go around. All of it ever mined would fit into a small building - a 56 fott cube.
The annual world production would fit into a 14 foot cube, roughly the size of an ordinary living room. If each Chinese citizen were to buy just one ounce, it would take up the annual supply
for the next 200 years."
- Mark Nestman
* * *
"... the privilege of creating and issuing money... is the government's greatest creative opportunity...
[saving] the taxpayers immense sums of money..."
- Abraham Lincoln
* * *
"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation,
the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children will wake up
homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to then Secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatin, 1802
* * *
"Inflation has now been institutionalized at a fairly constant 5% per year. This has been determined to be the optimum level
for generating the most revenue without causing public alarm. A 5% devaluation applies, not only to the money earned this year,
but to all that is left over from previous years. At the end of the first year, a dollar is worth 95 cents. At the end of the
second year, the 95 cents is reduced again by 5%, leaving its worth at 90 cents, and so on. By the time a person has worked 20
years, the government will have confiscated 64% of every dollar he has saved over those years. By the time he has worked 45
years, the hidden tax will be 90%. The government will take virtually everything a person saves over a lifetime."
- G. Edward Griffin, historian and author of The Creature From Jekyll Island, The Fearful Master: A Second Look at the United Nations, and World Without Cancer: The Story of Vitamin B17
* * *
"The Founding Fathers of this great land had no difficulty whatsoever understanding the agenda of bankers,
and they frequently referred to them and their kind as, quote, 'friends of paper money.' They hated the Bank
of England, in particular, and felt that even were we successful in winning our independence from England and
King George, we could never truly be a nation of free men, unless we had an honest money system. Through
ignorance, but moreover, because of apathy, a small, but wealthy, clique of power brokers have robbed us of our
Rights and Liberties, and we are being raped of our wealth. We are paying the price for the near-comatose levels
of complacency by our parents, and only God knows what might become of our children, should we not work dilligently
to shake this country from its slumber! Many a nation has lost its freedom at the end of a gun barrel, but here in
America, we just decided to hand it over voluntarily. Worse yet, we paid for the tyranny and usurption out of our
own pockets with 'voluntary' tax contributions and the use of a debt-laden fiat currency!"
- Peter Kershaw, Economic Solutions 1994
* * *
"The tax power has been used by the national government as a weapon to take over, one by one, subjects
traditionally within the orbit of state police power."
- Chief Justice Taft
* * *
"... 'income,' as used in the statute should be given the meaning so as not to include everything that comes in.
The true function of the words 'gain' and 'profit' is to limit the meaning of the word 'income.'"
- United States Supreme Court, So. Pacific v. Lower, 238 F 847
* * *
"Income Tax: A tax on the yearly profits arising from property, professions, trades, and offices."
- Black's Law Dictionary Second Edition, 1891
* * *
"A fine is a tax for breaking the law; a tax is a fine for obeying the law."
- J.H. Goldfuss
* * *
"The United States government was established to protect rights, not to raise revenue. But now the courts see
their first duty being to protect the raising of revenue. ... The government wants to ban me not because what I
say is frivolous but because it's correct; anyone can verify it."
- Irwin Schiff, statement after a
federal judge banned his book "The Federal Mafia: How the Government Illegally
Imposes and Unlawfully Collects Income Taxes", March 19, 2003
* * *
"When more of the people's sustenance is extracted through the form of taxation than is necessary to meet the
just obligations of Government and expenses of its economical administration, such extraction becomes ruthless
extortion and a violation of the fundamental principles of a free Government."
- Grover Cleveland
* * *
"What is economics? A science invented by the upper class in order to acquire the fruits of the labor of the underclass."
- August Strindberg, 1884
* * *
"On November 30 a meeting was held at the Justice Department of top aides to Robert Kennedy and officials of the Internal
Revenue Service, the State Department and the CIA ...
"The high-level meeting concluded that Castro's demand of $53,000,000 in drugs would cost only $17,000,000 at wholesale
U.S. prices. It was also decided to study the tax angle involved in possible contributions of drugs by the companies. It
was agreed that a memorandum would be prepared over the weekend to be ready for Robert Kennedy on Monday December 3.*
In the meantime, a drug-industry representative was contacted informally.
"* The memorandum noted that some drug companies might gain a tax "windfall" by making charitable contributions to the
prisoner exchange deal. An accompanying letter by Oberdorfer to Robert Kennedy pointed out that the drug companies would
nevertheless insist on approval of the deal by someone at least as high as a Cabinet officer as well as "maximum protection
from legislative and public criticism in two particular directions: (a) charges of pro-Communism and (b) criticism for
inferences drawn from any price mark-up exposed in the transaction."
- David Wise and Thomas B. Ross, The Invisible Government, 1964
* * *
"Internal Audit is a notoriously closed group within the IRS, like a private club or a secret society, and acts accordingly
when one of its members is attacked, particularly when one of its members on an executive level is attacked from within
the community, by one of his subordinates."
- Shelley L. Davis, Unbridled Power: Inside the Secret Culture of the IRS, 1997
* * *
"One IRS information system analyst I interviewed described this methodology as a classic case of 'taking a piece of this
one and a a piece of that one and saying it's something new and different so you show progress. When projects fail they're
combined with others or simply renamed. One year you have XYZ and ABC programs. The next year you announce the MNO project,
which features elements of XYZ and ABC. The next year you announce a new program FGH, which has parts of MNO, XYZ, ABC,
and maybe something new. They never have to do what they originally set out to do. It's a shell game.'"
- Shelley L. Davis, Unbridled Power: Inside the Secret Culture of the IRS, 1997
* * *
"The General Accounting Office reported in 1993 that IRS efforts to improve its computer systems since 1988, just five years,
had already cost $831 million. But a bigger problem was that the IRS could account for only $530 million of the total.
What happened to the remaining $301 million was something of a mystery. The IRS could pinpoint $240 million as spent on
'interim' projects and $290 million on its 'long-term' projects. The IRS couldn't explain the missing millions. The
General Accounting Office couldn't find it. Surely the answer lurked in the IRS records, right? What records?"
- Shelley L. Davis, Unbridled Power: Inside the Secret Culture of the IRS, 1997
* * *
"The surviving legacy of the Watergate years is reform, reform, and more reform. Unfortunately, the reforms have not
provided
results, results, and more results. An irate Congress and a deeply disillusioned public became determined to 'open up'
government so that never again would the country be confronted with a White House shrouded in secrecy. But to a startling
degree, at least with regard to the IRS, Congress's attempt to 'open up' the government has been a dismal failure. The
irony is that by taking steps designed to 'protect' tax returns from the wandering eyes of politicians, an unwitting
Congress handed to the IRS both a weapon and a shield that the tax collector has since used to fend off public scrutiny and
evade public accountability."
- Shelley L. Davis, Unbridled Power: Inside the Secret Culture of the IRS, 1997
* * *
"Compare an American taxpayers situation today with that of a 19th century American slave. Not all slaves worked on cotton plantations. Some with marketable skills
were leased to businesses or released to labor markets, where they worked for money wages. Just like the wages of todays taxpayer, a portion of the slaves money
wages was withheld. In those days the private owner, not the government, received the withheld portion of the slaves wages.
"Slaves in that situation were as free as todays American taxpayer to choose their housing from the available stock, purchase their food and clothing, and entertain
themselves.
"In fact, they were freer than todays American taxpayer. By hard work and thrift, they could save enough to purchase their freedom.
"No American today can purchase his freedom from the IRS.
"Slaves could also run away. Today, Americans who run away are pursued to the far ends of the earth. Indeed, the IRS can assert its ownership rights for years after an
American gives up his citizenship and becomes a citizen of a different country. The IRS need only claim that the former American gave up his citizenship for tax reasons."
- Paul Craig Roberts
* * *
"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 (1903)
* * *
"I think the terror most people are concerned with is the IRS."
Malcolm Forbes, when asked if he was afraid of terrorism
* * *
"To tax the larger incomes at a higher percentage than the smaller, is to lay a tax on industry and economy; to impose a
penalty on people for having worked harder and saved more than their neighbors."
John Stuart Mill
* * *
"When taxes are too high, people go hungry."
Lao Tsu
* * *
"Taking somebody's money without permission is stealing, unless you work for the IRS; then it's taxation. Killing people
en masse is homicidal mania, unless you work for the Army; then it's National Defense. Spying on your neighbors is invasion
of privacy, unless you work for the FBI; then it's National Security. Running a whorehouse makes you a pimp and poisoning
people makes you a murderer, unless you work for the CIA; then it's counter-intelligence."
Robert Anton Wilson
* * *
"The people of the various provinces are strictly forbidden to have in their possession any swords, bows, spears, firearms
or other types of arms. The possession of these elements makes difficult the collection of taxes and dues, and tends to
permit uprising."
Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Japanese Shogun, August 29, 1558
* * *
"People who create things nowadays can expect to be prosecuted by highly moralistic people who are incapable of creating
anything. There is no way to measure the chilling effect on innovation that results from the threats of taxation,
regulation and prosecution against anything that succeeds. We'll never know how many ideas our government has aborted in
the name protecting us."
Joseph Sobran May 13, 1998 (commenting on US vs Microsoft)
* * *
"A [tax loophole is] something that benefits the other guy. If it benefits you, it is tax reform."
Russell B. Long
* * *
"[S]tatism is but socialized dishonesty; it is feathering the nests of some with feathers coercively plucked from others
on the grand scale. There is no moral difference between the act of a pickpocket and the progressive income tax or any
other social program."
Leonard Read
* * *
"There's another major hurdle to a new year of prosperity: our tax code. No human being understands it. The current code,
which runs over 8,000 pages and countless thousands more pages of IRS rulings and interpretations, is beyond redemption.
..Incalculable amounts of the nation's intellectual brainpower are devoted to the dead-end task of coping with the current
tax code. Over one-half million people in the U.S. make their living off it, whether in lobbying, lawyering, tax preparing,
or accounting.
Americans spend five and one-half billion hours a year filling out tax forms
and spend between $100
billion and $300 billion to comply with the current code."
Malcolm S. Forbes
* * *
"The average family pays more in taxes than it spends on food, clothing, and shelter combined."
Congressman Dick Armey, Why a Flat Tax?, Durell Journal of Money and Banking, Spring 1995
* * *
"With all that IMF money, the Thailand's and Mexico's are spared the consequences of their fiscal incompetence, and Wall
Street's heavy hitters are spared the consequences of their stupid investments. The global economy is a rigged game,
rigged so Third World politicians, rich investors and global corporations win and U.S. taxpayers lose."
Patrick J. Buchanan
* * *
"By the year 2012, projected outlays for entitlements and interest on the national debt will consume all tax revenues
collected by the federal government
There will not be one cent left over for education, children's programs, highways,
national defense, or any other discretionary program."
Bipartisan U.S. Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform
* * *
"A government debt is a government claim against personal income and private property an unpaid tax bill."
Hans F. Sennholz, Debts & Deficits
* * *
"If I deny the authority of the State when it presents my tax bill, it will soon take and waste all my property, and so
harass me and my children without end. This is hard, this makes it impossible for a man to live honestly, and at the same
time comfortably, in outward respects."
Henry David Thoreau
* * *
"Going to war accelerated the move from indirect to direct rule. Almost any state that makes war finds that it cannot pay
for the effort from its accumulated reserves and current revenues. Almost all war-making states borrow extensively, raise
taxes, and seize the means of combat including men from reluctant citizens who have other uses for their resources."
Charles Tilly
* * *
"The difference between death and taxes is, death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets."
Will Rogers
* * *
"There is only one way to kill capitalism by taxes, taxes, and more taxes."
Karl Marx
* * *
"When a self-governing people confer upon their government the power to take from some and give to others, the process will
not stop until the last bone of the last taxpayer is picked bare."
Howard Kershner
* * *
"When more of the people's sustenance is exacted through the form of taxation than is necessary to meet the just
obligations of government and expenses of its economical administration, such exaction becomes ruthless extortion and a
violation of the fundamental principles of a free government."
President Grover Cleveland
* * *
"It would be thought a hard government that should tax its people one tenth part."
Benjamin Franklin
* * *
"Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery."
President Calvin Coolidge
* * *
"Form 1040 was chosen by the IRS because for every $50 you earn, you get 10 and they get 40."
Jay Leno
* * *
"The average American family head will be forced to do twenty years' labor to pay taxes in his or her lifetime."
James Bovard, Lost Rights
* * *
"If taxation without consent is not robbery, then any band of robbers have only to declare themselves a government, and all
their robberies are legalized."
Lysander Spooner
* * *
"There cannot be a good tax nor a just one; every tax rests its case on compulsion."
Frank Chodorov
* * *
"Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed."
Robert A. Heinlein
* * *
"A tax-supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state."
Isabel Paterson (1886-1961), American Author
* * *
"What the government is good at is collecting taxes, taking away your freedoms and killing people. It's not good at much
else."
Tom Clancy, on Kudlow and Cramer 9/2/03
* * *
"To shackle future generations, with such monstrous debt and liabilities [$50 trillion+ of unfunded federal liabilities],
is tantamount to selling them into tax slavery."
Eric Englund in Income Taxes, Obesity, and Other Maladies of Nanny Statism 2/28/05.
* * *
"We cannot restore traditional American freedom unless we limit the government's power to tax. No tinkering with this,
that, or the other law will stop the trend toward socialism. We must repeal the Sixteenth Amendment."
Frank Chodorov in The Income Tax: Root of all Evil
* * *
