Top 100 Tax Income Quotes
#1. In the quarter century between 1979 and 2005, average after-tax income (adjusted for inflation) grew by $900 a year for the bottom fifth of American households, by $8,700 a year for the middle fifth, and by $745,000 a year for the top 1 percent of households.
Robert D. Putnam
#2. When Ralph Goodale tried to tax Income Trusts they showed us where they stood, they showed us their attitude towards raiding Seniors hard earned assets and a Conservative government will never allow either of these parties to get away with that.
Stephen Harper
#3. I believe capital gains, for the most part, should be taxed the same way we tax income from hard work, sweat, and toil. And if we do those things, we can be a country that actually can afford debt-free college again.
Hillary Clinton
#4. Teddy Roosevelt supported a progressive income tax. If I am sitting pretty and you've got a waitress who is making minimum wage plus tips, and I can afford it and she can't, what's the big deal for me to say, 'I'm going to pay a little bit more'? That is neighborliness.
Barack Obama
#5. I found that I was getting a warm reception for my message of freeing you from the income tax, releasing you from Social Security, ending the insane war on drugs, restoring gun rights, and reducing the federal government to just its constitutional functions.
Harry Browne
#6. The important prediction is not the automobile, but the parking problem; not radio, but the soap opera; not the income tax, but the expense account; not the Bomb, but the nuclear stalemate
Isaac Asimov
#7. Anybody who is familiar with the historical data from the IRS knows that raising income tax rates will likely actually reduce federal revenues.
Mike Pence
#8. The truth is, our corporate income taxes are some of the highest in the world, and frankly, in my judgment it's unpatriotic if you're not for reducing the corporate income tax. We want to make it so American companies are on a more level playing field competing with companies around the world.
Jim Jordan
#9. The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.
Arthur C. Clarke
#10. The tax relief that this Congress has given now in terms of four tax cuts has overwhelmingly gone to the people at the very top of the income scale in America.
Richard Neal
#11. The truth is, Hillary Clinton's ideas create more income inequality. Why? Because bigger government creates crony capitalism. When you have a 70,000 page tax code, you've got to be very wealthy, very powerful, very well connected to dig your way through that tax code.
Carly Fiorina
#12. There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.
Robert A. Heinlein
#13. A lot of girls annoy me who go to university - one girl told me she was going to Oxford because it was something to do between leaving school and getting married. And I've got to pay for that being an income tax payer.
Jeffrey Bernard
#15. Trickle down economics is a fraud. Giving tax breaks to the rich and large corporations does not create jobs. It simply makes the rich richer, enlarges the deficit and increases income and wealth inequality. We need economic policies which benefit working families, not the billionaire class.
Bernie Sanders
#16. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
Karl Marx
#17. There is no income tax in Russia. But there's no income.
Will Rogers
#18. The [Donald] Trump plan would increase the national debt a little over a $1 trillion a year, the Trump plan would reduce taxes at all income levels with, of course, the biggest tax cuts going to the richest taxpayers as they always do.
Lawrence O'Donnell
#19. The income tax created more criminals than any other single act of government.
Barry Goldwater
#20. I've been paying a lot of money in state income taxes, and I've been happy to do it, but when this last thing happened, this 50 percent increase in the tax rate, it was just too much.
Tom Golisano
#21. Stop policing the world and we can get rid of income tax.
Ron Paul
#22. The nation's first experiment with the income tax was tried at this time; another violation of the Constitution.
G. Edward Griffin
#23. All the Congress, all the accountants and tax lawyers, all the judges, and a convention of wizards all cannot tell for sure what the income tax law says.
Walter Wriston
#24. I like to say I'm more conservative than Goldwater. He just wanted to turn the clock back to when there was no income tax.
Pete Seeger
#25. No nation in history has ever survived a tax burden that reached a third of its national income.
Ronald Reagan
#26. When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.
Plato
#27. The corporate income tax, in particular, is a tax that puts American corporations at a disadvantage.
Ken Buck
#28. One has to try to develop one's inner feelings, which can be done simply by training one's mind. This is a priceless human asset and one you don't have to pay income tax on!
Dalai Lama
#29. I'm 21 years old, and it's kind of uncomfortable for me to talk about, but I'm in the 1 percent as far as my income and tax bracket. But now that I'm here, there's no amount of money you can wave in front of my face that will make me understand depriving people of human rights.
Halsey
#30. The IRS is currently considering a rule that would make it easier for tax preparers to disclose the private information contained in tax returns - including name, address, Social Security number, employer, income, and charitable donations.
Melissa Bean
#31. no mathematical formula or econometric estimate can tell us exactly what tax rate ought to be applied to what level of income. Only collective deliberation and democratic experimentation can do that.
Thomas Piketty
#32. Many states rely on sales tax as their principle source of revenue and do not have a State income tax.
William L. Jenkins
#33. Men lie only in two scenarios. One when
they have to hide their new girlfriend from the existing one(s) and second when they have to hide their income from the tax authorities.
Nitin Sharma
#34. I'll tell you who doesn't have any personal responsibility. Companies like General Electric and others who pay absolutely no income tax.
Michael Moore
#35. Just as no one is morally required to answer a robber truthfully when he asks if there are any valuables in one's house, so no one can be morally required to answer truthfully similar questions asked by the State, e.g., when filling out income tax returns.
Murray Rothbard
#36. Let me tell you, the heart of my tax proposal: I will not raise taxes on the American people. I will not raise taxes on middle-income Americans.
Mitt Romney
#37. The income tax has made liars out of more Americans than golf.
Will Rogers
#38. (which did not exist before the creation of the income tax in 1913)
Thomas Piketty
#40. An investment is tax inefficient if it relies heavily on investment income, instead of its price movement.
Michael Brentwood
#41. And what's interesting, and I don't think a lot of Americans understand this fact, is that, one, most new jobs are created by small businesses; two, most small businesses pay tax at the individual income tax, or many small businesses pay tax there.
George W. Bush
#42. Rich people are so eccentric, and I don't think people really realize. Especially by the turn of the century, they were living like rappers, and there was no income tax. They are some of the most fascinating people, and I am endlessly fascinated.
Riki Lindhome
#43. While the wealthiest families completely benefit from the tax cuts targeted towards the upper brackets, middle-income families were hit with the unwelcome surprise of higher taxes on tax day.
Tim Bishop
#44. A government debt is a government claim against personal income and private property - an unpaid tax bill.
Hans F. Sennholz
#45. In Greece, Italy and, to a lesser extent, France, unsustainable tax cuts and spending sprees added to households' estimates of their private wealth relative to their wage income.
Edmund Phelps
#46. The same computers that make it impossible for you to cheat on your income tax can ensure that the blood of your group is in the ambulance that picks you up from a car smash.
John Brunner
#47. Everyone else is parsing it in terms of lowering the corporate income tax. Eliminate it. It's not that big of a generator of income, and it's a double tax. Get rid of it, and you would have an explosion of hiring.
Gary Johnson
#48. Once you realize that trickle-down economics does not work, you will see the excessive tax cuts for the rich as what they are
a simple upward redistribution of income, rather than a way to make all of us richer, as we were told.
Ha-Joon Chang
#49. Ford's federal income tax rate was just 2.3 percent in 2009 even though it made $3 billion in profits.
Bernie Sanders
#50. We're not as materialistic and income-tax conscious as we think. At the moment our superstitions are tucked away, but come out sometimes in strange ways sex crimes, black masses.
Terence Fisher
#51. It's income tax time again, Americans: time to gather up those receipts, get out those tax forms, sharpen up that pencil, and stab yourself in the aorta
Dave Barry
#52. Let me respond with a few points, the first being that all immigrants pay taxes, income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, gasoline taxes, cigarette taxes, every tax when they make a purchase.
Luis Gutierrez
#53. There's just one thing I can't figure out. My income tax!
Nat King Cole
#54. For every day the government is shut down, it should be that we don't have to pay income tax that day because they're not working.
Jesse Ventura
#55. The federal government is often said in militia circles to have made wholesale seizures of power, at times by subterfuge. A leading grievance holds that the 16th Amendment, which authorizes the federal income tax, was ratified through fraud.
Barton Gellman
#56. The left is being funded primarily by the drug traffickers who provide this tax money and that's why the guerrillas in Colombia, unlike the guerrillas anywhere else in Latin America, have been able to survive for 40 years because they have a hard, solid source of income.
Alma Guillermoprieto
#57. The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
Albert Einstein
#58. You can't legitimately kick on income tax, for it's on what you have made. You have already made it. But, look at land, farms, homes, stores, vacant lots. You pay year after year on them whether you make it or not.
Will Rogers
#59. Long time ago when we were fab, back when income tax was all we had.
George Harrison
#60. The idea of abolishing Income Tax is to me highly attractive, both on other grounds & because it tends to public economy.
William E. Gladstone
#61. Conventional wisdom on government's role in inequality often has it backwards. Tax reforms have resulted in a more progressive federal income tax; government transfer payments have become less progressive.
Paul Ryan
#62. You know, gentlemen, that I do not owe any personal income tax. But nevertheless, I send a small check, now and then, to the Internal Revenue Service out of the kindness of my heart.
David Rockefeller
#63. We've already donated to Haiti. It's called the U.S. income tax.
Rush Limbaugh
#64. We should be forced to give so many exemptions and concessions (inevitably to the benefit of high spending authorities in Inner London) that the flat-rate poll tax would rapidly become a surrogate income tax.
Nigel Lawson
#65. I believe that there should be a very much heavier progressive tax on very large incomes, a tax which should increase in a very marked fashion for the gigantic incomes.
Theodore Roosevelt
#66. Hating the Yankees is as American as pizza pie, unwed mothers, and cheating on your income tax.
Mike Royko
#67. I would like to electrocute everyone who uses the word 'fair' in connection with income tax policies.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#68. The income tax is a twentieth-century socialist experiment that has failed. Before the income tax was imposed on us just 80 years ago, government had no claim to our income. Only sales, excise, and tariff taxes were allowed.
Alan Keyes
#69. Don't tax my income, tax my consumption.
Bill Gates
#70. 1913 wasn't a very good year. 1913 gave us the income tax, the 16th amendment and the IRS.
Ron Paul
#71. I love the Roth IRA. Tax-free income in retirement is a truly great deal.
Suze Orman
#72. I got five kids - I claim three for income tax purposes.
Tracy Morgan
#73. When you tax capital gains income, you don't help the economy, you hurt the economy, which is why President Kennedy, President Reagan, President Clinton and President Bush all believed we should have a lower rate for capital gains.
Rob Portman
#74. Income tax filing and payment day should be moved from April 15th to November 1st so it can be close to election day. People ought to have their tax bills fresh in mind as they go to vote.
Steven G. Calabresi
#75. The income tax is flawed for a number of reasons - it discourages economic growth and encourages a bloated government.
Mark Skousen
#76. In 2010 the U.S. will have a payroll tax rate increase, an estate tax increase, and income tax increases. There's also a tax increase coming in 2010 on carried interest. This rate will rise from its current level of 15 percent to 35 percent, and then it will rise again in 2011.
Arthur Laffer
#77. Luxury is the income tax of vanity. But it is so pleasant.
Karl Lagerfeld
#78. On my income tax 1040 it says 'Check this box if you are blind.' I wanted to put a check mark about three inches away.
Tom Lehrer
#79. We should try to ensure that everyone has a fair opportunity to find a great life. It's a quest that will require political will and ingenious policies. President Obama's proposed expansion of the earned-income tax credit goes in this direction, but we need more.
Sendhil Mullainathan
#80. Tax expenditures for middle- and working-class Americans - like the earned income tax credit - aren't thought of as loopholes; they're just thought of as benefits.
Alex Pareene
#81. Our financial ills will never be settled till you fix it so every man will pay an income tax on what he earns, be it a farm, grocery store or municipal or government bonds.
Will Rogers
#82. Lobbyists know that a 0 percent tax rate on capital income is not, in fact, the lowest possible rate. There can be negative tax rates. There can be subsidies. There can be allowances for depreciation. Lobbyists are adaptive creatures.
Joel Achenbach
#83. High taxation was not regarded in these years as an affront. On the contrary, steep rates of progressive income tax were seen as a consensual device to take excess resources away from the privileged
Tony Judt
#84. By the year 1982 the graduated income tax will have practically
abolished major differences in wealth.
Irwin Edman
#85. The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax.
Albert Einstein
#86. Most of the presidential candidates' economic packages involve 'tax breaks,' which is when the government, amid great fanfare, generously decides not to take quite so much of your income. In other words, these candidates are trying to buy your votes with your own money.
Dave Barry
#87. The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has.
Will Rogers
#88. Few Americans realize it, but the United Nations is driving to take control over the Internet. You remember, the folks who want a worldwide income tax and who put Syria and Iran on their Human Rights Committee.
Arthur L. Herman
#89. High tax rates distort economic decision making, and our corporate income tax rate is one of the highest in the world.
Jason Chaffetz
#90. A homeless man once told me that dancing to rap music is the cultural equivalent of masturbating, and I'd sort of fell the same way about playing John Madden Football immediately after filing my income tax: It's fun, but - somehow - vaguely pathetic.
Chuck Klosterman
#91. I just filled out my income tax forms. Who says you can't get killed by a blank?
Milton Berle
#92. Did you know that they introduced the 15 percent flat tax on individual and corporate income in Iraq? Something that some politicians very much wanted to push in the United States without success but in Iraq they do it.
Juan Cole
#93. You have phantom income each year. No money is being put in your pocket, but you have to take some money out of your pocket to pay Uncle Sam because the tax is paid based on accretion.
Scott Walker
#94. We will attract more people to Kentucky by lowering our income tax rate. In fact, lowering the income tax rate is the single most important thing we can do to create opportunity.
Ernie Fletcher
#95. It was under Wilson, of course, that the first huge parts of the Marxist program, such as the progressive income tax, were incorporated into the American system.
Robert W. Welch Jr.
#96. If people give up their attachment to expansive government, they will feel free to fight the income tax.
Sheldon Richman
#97. The zero-income-tax-rate states have far faster growth in tax revenues than did the states with highest income tax rate over the same period.
Arthur Laffer
#98. We can applaud the state lottery as a public subsidy of intelligence, for it yields public income that is calculated to lighten the tax burden of us prudent abstainers at the expense of the benighted masses of wishful thinkers.
Willard Van Orman Quine
#99. The high income tax come pretty near passing in the Senate. Only lacked about six votes. So it won't be long now. Well, there is millions and millions that are not making it, that would be glad to give up 99 per cent if you would let 'em earn a hundred thousand or more.
Will Rogers
#100. Elections have to have at least a little meaning. Obama ran on income tax hikes for the wealthy. People knew they were voting for that. They 'want' that. And it's good policy.
Gail Collins
