Taxation quotes:

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Taxation without representation is tyranny. -- James Otis
Taxation: how the sheep are shorn. -- Edward Abbey
Taxation is just a sophisticated way of demanding money with menaces. -- Terry Pratchett
Inflation is taxation without legislation. -- Milton Friedman
America is a land of taxation that was founded to avoid taxation. -- Laurence J. Peter
Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation. -- Milton Friedman
The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation. -- Vladimir Lenin
I don't know what to do or where to turn in this taxation matter. Somewhere there must be a book that tells all about it, where I could go to straighten it out in my mind. But I don't know where the book is, and maybe I couldn't read it if I found it. -- Warren G. Harding
Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery. -- Calvin Coolidge
Death, taxes and childbirth! There's never any convenient time for any of them. -- Margaret Mitchell
If Thomas Jefferson thought taxation without representation was bad, he should see how it is with representation. -- Rush Limbaugh
Excessive taxation . . . will carry reason & reflection to every man's door, and particularly in the hour of election. -- Thomas Jefferson
The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin. -- Mark Twain
Taxes, after all, are dues that we pay for the privileges of membership in an organized society. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt
I know all those people. I have friendly, social, and criminal relations with the whole lot of them. -- Mark Twain
The necessary connexion of representatives with taxes, seems to have sunk deep into many of those minds, that admit sounds, without their meaning. -- Samuel Johnson
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
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
No one can become rich by the efforts of only their toil, but only by the discovery of some method of taxing the labor of others. -- John Ruskin
An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation. -- John Marshall
Civil servants and priests, soldiers and ballet-dancers, schoolmasters and police constables, Greek museums and Gothic steeples, civil list and services list -- the common seed within which all these fabulous beings slumber in embryo is taxation. -- Karl Marx
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
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 divorce between Church and State ought to be absolute. It ought to be so absolute that no Church property anywhere, in any state or in the nation, should be exempt from equal taxation; for if you exempt the property of any church organization, to that extent you impose a tax upon the whole community. -- James A. Garfield
Taxation is the legitimate support of government. -- Adolphe Thiers
Taxation is robbery based on monopoly of weapons -- Robert Anton Wilson
Taxation under every form presents but a choice of evils. -- David Ricardo
Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor. -- Robert Nozick
Taxation is nothing but organized robbery, and there the subject should be dropped. -- Frank Chodorov
Taxation is the price which civilized communities pay for the opportunity of remaining civilized. -- Albert Bushnell Hart
Taxation being a burthen, must needs weigh lightest on each individual, when it bears upon all alike. -- Jean-Baptiste Say
The fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follow that, and in its turn wretchedness and oppression. -- Thomas Jefferson
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. -- Mark Skousen
Taxation is, in fact, the most difficult function of government and that against which their citizens are most apt to be refractory. -- Thomas Jefferson
Taxation of private property, or the regulation of such property so as to reduce its value, can become in effect a form of servitude. -- Mark Levin
Taxation, gentlemen, is very much like dairy farming. The task is to extract the maximum amount of milk with the minimum amount of moo. -- Terry Pratchett
Taxation is not a method by which the community corporately provides itself with essential services, but a fund to be divided between different interests with political claims upon the state. -- Neville Chamberlain
Money is time made tangible - the time invested in the earning of it. Taxation is the confiscation of the earner's time. Although some taxation is necessary, all taxation diminishes freedom. -- George Will
Taxation is not charity. It is not voluntary. As we shrink the state and make government smaller, we will find that more and more people are able to take care of themselves. -- Grover Norquist
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 Nozick
Taxation according to income is the most effective instrument yet devised to obtain just contribution from those best able to bear it and to avoid placing onerous burdens upon the mass of our people. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt
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
Taxation, for example, is eternally lively; it concerns nine-tenths of us more directly than either smallpox or golf, and has just as much drama in it; moreover, it has been mellowed and made gay by as many gaudy, preposterous theories -- H. L. Mencken
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
An education system where student selection is based on credit capacity and not merit capacity and where graduating students are no longer indebted to the nation, but increasingly indebted to the Australian Taxation Office - that's no way to improve the quality of education. -- Gough Whitlam
The wisdom of man never yet contrived a system of taxation that would operate with perfect equality. -- Andrew Jackson
My expertise was in public finance, particularly corporate taxation, since I had worked at the US Treasury. -- Merton Miller
Large fortunes are all founded either on the occupation of land, or lending or the taxation of labor. -- John Ruskin
I prefer for government to err toward less regulation, lower taxation, and free markets. And I'm a radical free trader. -- Mark McKinnon
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 believe in taxation and health care that is outside the usual libertarian mandate, because I don't want people to have to suffer. It's as simple as that. -- Neil Peart
A general principle of good taxation is that similar jobs, and similar kinds of compensation, should be taxed the same way: otherwise, the government is effectively subsidizing some jobs over others. -- James Surowiecki
Every diminution of the public burdens arising from taxation gives to individual enterprise increased power and furnishes to all the members of our happy confederacy new motives for patriotic affection and support. -- Andrew Jackson
My parents both defected from communist Hungary and were what most people would today call libertarian. I grew up with a general distaste for taxation and any policy that intruded on our lives. -- David Harsanyi
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
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
When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that the old source is abandoned. It merely means that the politicians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had one before. -- H. L. Mencken
The tendency of taxation is to create a class of persons who do not labor, to take from those who do labor the produce of that labor, and to give it to those who do not labor. -- William Cobbett
No animal on the face of the earth could conceive of taxation. You and I work roughly six months a year to pay our local, state and federal taxes. If nothing else, this should convince you that animals are smarter than people. -- Rita Mae Brown
Fortunately for India, it has got a growing economy. If it is doing the right things with taxation and focusing on the right areas for human development, it is going to have no problem, over a period of time, taking care of its own needs. -- Bill Gates
Broadly speaking, the Southern and Western desert and mountain states will vote for the candidate who endorses an aggressive military, a role for religion in public life, laissez-faire economic policies, private ownership of guns and relaxed conditions for using them, less regulation and taxation, and a valorization of the traditional family. -- Steven Pinker
If taxation without consent is robbery, the United States government has never had, has not now, and is never likely to have, a single honest dollar in its treasury. 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
No taxation without respiration. -- Tom Feeney
Printing money is merely taxation in another form. -- Peter Schiff
Over-taxation cost England her colonies of North America. -- Edmund Burke
Abolish all taxation save that upon land values. -- Henry George
The United States has a system of taxation by confession -- Hugo Black
In the matter of taxation, every privilege is an injustice. -- Voltaire
What we should have fought for was representation without taxation. -- Sam Levenson
This is a form of double taxation and it's simply unfair. -- Doc Hastings
Peace and prosperity are inversely proportional to the level of taxation. -- John Pugsley
A lottery is a taxation on all of the fools in creation. -- Henry Fielding
I would suggest the taxation of all property equally whether church or corporation. -- Ulysses S. Grant
An expropriating property protector (the state, through taxation) is a contradiction in terms -- Hans-Hermann Hoppe
Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation -- Milton Friedman
But we need to quit taxing people upon death. No taxation without respiration. -- Steve King
Inflation is a form of hidden taxation which it is almost impossible to measure. -- John J. Beckley
The separation of Church and State in everything relating to taxation should be absolute. -- James A. Garfield
Did you ever get to wondering if taxation without representation might have been cheaper? -- Robert Orben
In a fully free society, taxation-or, to be exact, payment for governmental services-would be voluntary. -- Ayn Rand
Less regulation plus less taxation plus less litigation always equals more innovation and job creation. -- Marsha Blackburn
The institution of taxation rests foursquare on the axiom that somebody must rule somebody else. -- Frank Chodorov
Our forefathers made one mistake. What they should have fought for was representation without taxation. -- Fletcher Knebel
Of all the powers conferred upon government, that of taxation is most liable to abuse. -- Samuel Freeman Miller
Unlike every other person and institution in society, government obtains its revenue from coercion, from taxation. -- Murray Rothbard
The biggest review of taxation ever undertaken in this country, is now dead in the water. -- Malcolm Turnbull
Liberal redistributionists in favor of heavy taxation place less weight on incentive than do small-government conservatives. -- Edmund Phelps
Those jobs flee other states because of factors like excessive taxation, punitive regulation and frivolous lawsuits. -- Rick Perry
The better an entrepreneur succeeds, the more is he vilified and themore is he soaked by taxation. -- Ludwig von Mises
The crime of taxation is not in the taking it, it's in the way that it's spent. -- Will Rogers
The highest-income Americans don't need tax-free health insurance, mortgage interest deductions or deferred taxation on retirement funds. -- Steven Rattner
I think the Republicans have really thoughtful financial policies, and I'm more in the middle on taxation. -- Jamie Dimon
The road to recovery is to stimulate small business and innovation by reducing taxation, regulation, and litigation. -- Sandy Adams
I think coercive taxation is theft, and government has a moral duty to keep it to a minimum. -- William Weld
Capital goes to where it can escape taxation and be used to pay employees in sacks of rice. -- Walter Wriston
Is there a point of taxation wherein even a Democrat would acknowledge it is thievery by the government? -- Dennis Prager
What I argue for is a progressive tax, a global tax, based on the taxation of private property. -- Thomas Piketty
The old liberal rebelled against taxation without responsibility, the new liberal wants the taxation as a handout without responsibility. -- Fulton J. Sheen
Encouragement of sedentarism is perhaps the oldest "state project," a project related to the second-oldest state project of taxation. -- James C. Scott
The greed and envy of the nonproducer is insatiable, so that eventually nothing short of 100% taxation will appease him. -- Robert Ringer
We really need to change taxation policy so that it is not skewed against owning more than one house. -- Andrew Forrest
There is no escaping the fact that when the taxation of large incomes is excessive, they tend to disappear. -- Calvin Coolidge
Everything a politician promises at election time has to be paid for either by higher taxation or by borrowing. -- Margaret Thatcher
Greece is an extreme case: a country where both the level of spending and the level of taxation were unsustainable! -- Malcolm Turnbull
What I know is that taxation, as far as liberal Democrats are concerned, is not about money. It's about power. -- Ruqaiyyah Waris Maqsood
What I know is that taxation, as far as liberal Democrats are concerned, is not about money. It's about power. -- Ruqaiyyah Waris Maqsood
Democratic nation states remain far more capable of managing the circuit of coercion, taxation and legitimation than any transnational bodies. -- Geoff Mulgan
Every dollar released from taxation that is spared or invested will help create a new job and a new salary. -- John F. Kennedy
I'm willing to fight for Social Security, Medicare, student loans, U.S. jobs, equal pay, progressive taxation and full employment. -- Alan Grayson
When land and its tillage are the basis of taxation, one need not care exactly how many people there are. -- Ian Hacking
We have to change economic policy: create confidence, foster investment, cut the public deficit, restructure taxation and reform the labor laws. -- Mariano Rajoy
Should government refrain from regulation (taxation), the worthlessness of the money becomes apparent and the fraud can no longer be concealed. -- John Maynard Keynes
The U.S. is the country that invented progressive taxation of income and of inherited wealth in the 1910s and 20s. -- Thomas Piketty
The estate tax has been a disaster. First of all it's double taxation, some people could even say it's triple taxation. -- Donald Trump
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 can fight over what the taxation levels should be, but the tax system should be very, very simple and not distortionary. -- Adam Davidson
I return my tax bill without paying it. My reason for doing so is that women suffer taxation yet have not representation. -- Lucy Stone
It is not the role of government to use the taxation and welfare system as a tool to level the playing field. -- Joe Hockey
It (land value taxation) guarantees that no one dispossess fellow citizens by obtaining a disproportionate share of what nature provides for humanity. -- William Vickrey
By common consent, most European countries support the maintenance of robust welfare states and are comfortable with taxation systems that support them. -- Charles Kennedy

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