A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a
tax can escape the obligation to pay it.
-Alexis de Tocqueville
A dog who thinks he is a man's best friend is a dog who obviously has
never met a tax lawyer.
-Fran Lebowitz
A fine is a tax for doing wrong; a tax is a fine for doing well.
-Unattributed
A person doesn't know how much he has to be thankful for until he has to
pay taxes on it.
-Ann Landers
A society which turns so many of its best and brightest into tax lawyers
may be doing something wrong.
-Hoffman F. Fuller
A tax cut is really one of the anecdotes to coming out of an economic
illness.
-George W. Bush
A tax loophole is something that benefits the other guy. If it benefits
you, it is tax reform.
-Russell B. Long
An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, the power to destroy.
-Daniel
Webster
And above all, above all, honest work must be rewarded by a fair and
just tax system. The tax system today does not reward hard work: it
penalizes it. Inherited or invested wealth frequently multiplies itself
while paying no taxes at all. But wages on the assembly line or in
farming the land, these hard-earned dollars are taxed to the very last
penny.
-George McGovern
Anybody has a right to evade taxes if he can get away with it. No
citizen has a moral obligation to assist in maintaining the government.
-J.P.
Morgan
Bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should
be happier than others.
-Oscar Wilde
Behind every man who achieves success,
Stands a mother, a wife and
the IRS.
-Ethel Jacobson
Being audited by the IRS is like having an autopsy without the benefit
of dying.
-Unattributed
Death and taxes are unsolved engineering problems.
-Romana Machado
Democracy is mob rule, but with income taxes.
-Unattributed
Doing your taxes is a great way to be reminded that you are
unsuccessful, unmarried and childless without having to talk to your
mother.
-Bryan Donaldson
Every advantage has its tax.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Good software leads to more work. Bad software leads to more work. If
there's any time left over from fiddling with software, people spend it
on making the tax and legal systems more complicated.
-Bill
Westfield
Governments last as long as the undertaxed can defend themselves against
the overtaxed.
-Bernard Berenson
Gradually, without noticing it, you turn into a Republican and judge
everything on the basis of whether or not it will increase your taxes.
-Dave
Barry
I bet that if you actually read the entire vastness of the U.S. Tax
Code, you'd find at least one sex scene.
-Dave Barry
I guess I think of lotteries as a tax on the mathematically challenged.
-Roger
Jones
I hate paying taxes. But I love the civilization they give me.
-Oliver
Wendell Holmes, Sr.
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
I owed the government $3,400 in taxes. So I sent them two hammers and a
toilet seat.
-Sue Murphy
I prefer liquor store robbers with hungry kids to companies that locate
offshore to avoid U.S. taxes.
-Warren Buffett
I want to find a voracious, small-minded predator and name it after the
IRS.
-Robert Bakker (Mr. Bakker is a paleontologist)
I wish the government would put a tax on pianos for the incompetent.
-Edith
Sitwell
I wouldn't mind paying taxes if I knew they were going to a friendly
country.
-Dick Gregory
If I have sex, I know my quarterly estimated taxes must be due. And if
it's oral sex, I know it's time to renew my driver's license.
-Ray
Romano
If Patrick Henry thought taxation without representation was bad, he
should see how bad it is with representation.
-The Farmer's Almanac
If the average man had had his way there would probably never have been
any state. Even today he resents it, classes death with taxes, and
yearns for that government which governs least. If he asks for many laws
it is only because he is sure that his neighbor needs them; privately he
is an unphilosophical anarchist, and thinks laws in his own case
superfluous.
-Will Durant
If the Lord had meant us to pay income taxes, he'd have made us smart
enough to prepare the return.
-Kirk Kirkpatrick
In case you didn't know, ethanol is made by mixing corn with your tax
dollars.
-Paul A. Gigot
Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without
legislation.
-Milton Friedman
Interesting thing about being rich is once you pay your taxes, you're
still rich.
-Lewis Black
IRS: We've got what it takes to take what you've got.
-Unattributed
(Bumper Sticker)
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
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
Like mothers, taxes are often misunderstood, but seldom forgotten.
-Lord
Bramwell
My uncle claims that if he files his income tax wrong he'll go to jail,
and if he files it right he'll go to the poor house.
-Nonnee Coan
Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is as satisfying as an income
tax refund.
-F.J. Raymond
Nonprofit status is what created the Bible Belt. The tax code brought
religion back to this country.
-Gore Vidal
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
On the whole, I prefer not to be lectured on patriotism by those who
keep offshore maildrops in order to avoid paying their taxes.
-Molly
Ivins
Our Constitution is in actual operation; everything appears to promise
that it will last; but nothing in this world is certain but death and
taxes.
-Benjamin Franklin
Owning your own home is America's unique recipe for avoiding revolution
and promoting pseudo-equality at the same time. To keep citizens
puttering in their yards instead of sputtering on the barricades, the
government has gladly deprived itself of billions in tax revenues by
letting home 'owners' deduct mortgage interest payments.
-Florence
King
Passive activity income does not include the following: Income from an
activity that is not a passive activity.
-(Instructions to IRS
Form 8582, Passive Activity Loss Limitations)
People want just taxes more than they want lower taxes. They want to
know that every man is paying his proportionate share according to his
wealth.
-Will Rogers
Political figures who talk a lot about liberty and freedom invariably
turn out to mean the freedom to not pay taxes and discriminate based on
race; freedom to hold different ideas and express them, not so much.
-Paul
Krugman
Politics is very much like taxes- everybody is against them, or
everybody is for them as long as they don't apply to him.
-Fiorello
LaGuardia
Real charity doesn't care if it's tax-deductible or not.
-Dan
Bennett
Tax reform is taking the taxes off things that have been taxed in the
past and putting taxes on things that haven't been taxed before.
-Art
Buchwald
Taxes and golf are alike: you drive your heart out for the green, and
then end up in the hole.
-Unattributed
The avoidance of taxes is the only pursuit that still carries any reward.
-John
Maynard Keynes
The contented and economically comfortable have a very discriminating
view of government. Nobody is ever indignant about bailing out failed
banks and failed savings and loans associations... But when taxes must
be paid for the lower middle class and poor, the government assumes an
aspect of wickedness.
-John Kenneth Galbraith
The Eiffel Tower is the Empire State Building after taxes.
-Unattributed
The First Rule of Practicing Tax Law: If someone has to go to jail, make
sure it's the client.
-Fred Drasner
The Government cannot afford to have a country made up entirely of rich
people, because rich people pay so little tax that the Government would
quickly go bankrupt. This is why Government men always tell us that
labor is man's noblest calling. Government needs labor to pay its upkeep.
-Russell
Baker
The government is mainly an expensive organization to regulate evildoers
and tax those who behave.
-E.W. Howe
The hardest thing in the world to understand is income taxes.
-Albert
Einstein
The income tax created more criminals than any other single act of
government.
-Barry M. Goldwater
The IRS may take some solace in the fact that Matthew was a tax
collector before he became a saint.
-Donald C. Alexander
The moral of the story of the Pilgrims is that if you work hard all your
life and behave yourself every minute and take no time out for fun you
will break practically even, if you can borrow enough money to pay your
taxes.
-Will Cuppy
The one thing that hurts more than having to pay income tax is not
having to pay income tax.
-Thomas R. Dewar
The only civilized country is one in which no man is afraid of the tax
collector.
-Juan de Mariana
The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn't get
worse every time Congress meets.
-Will Rogers
The only things in life that you can't avoid are death and taxes. And an
occasional pedestrian.
-Perry Friedman
The trick is to stop thinking of it as 'your' money.
(On dealing with
the IRS)
-Unattributed
The United States has a system of taxation by confession.
-Hugo
Black
The United States is the only country where it takes more brains to
figure your tax than to earn the money to pay it.
-Edward J. Gurney
The wages of sin are death, but after taxes are taken out, it's just a
tired feeling.
-Paula Poundstone
The way taxes are, you might as well marry for love.
-Joe E. Lewis
There is just one thing I can promise you about the outer space program:
your tax dollars will go farther.
-Wernher von Braun
There is untold wealth in America, especially at tax time.
-(Cartoon
caption in The Wall Street Journal)
There's always somebody who is paid too much, and taxed too little- and
it's always somebody else.
-Cullen Hightower
This year I'm going to deduct last year's taxes as a bad investment.
-Unattributed
To steal from one person is theft. To steal from many is taxation.
-Jeff
Daiell
To tax the community for the advantage of a class is not protection: it
is plunder.
-Benjamin Disraeli
True, everyone lies, but there's a difference between 'No, those pants
don't make your ass look fat, and 'No, there's nothing incriminating in
those unreleased tax returns.'
-Kevin G. Barkes
War- after all, what is it that the people get? Why- widows, taxes,
wooden legs and debt.
-Samuel B. Pettengill
What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The
taxidermist takes only your skin.
-Mark Twain
What we should have fought for was representation without taxation.
-Sam
Levenson
When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that
an old source is abandoned. It merely means that the politicians have
two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had only one before.
-H.L.
Mencken
When Barbary Pirates demand a fee for allowing you to do business, it's
called 'tribute money.' When the Mafia demands a fee for allowing you to
do business, it's called 'the protection racket.' When the State demands
a fee for allowing you to do business, it's called 'sales tax.'
-Jeff
Daiell
When everybody has got money they cut taxes, and when they're broke they
raise 'em. That's statesmanship of the highest order.
-Will Rogers
When it comes to finances, remember that there are no withholding taxes
on the wages of sin.
-Mae West
When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust
less on the same amount of income.
-Plato
When you come into the world you have nothing... when you leave you have
nothing... and in between there's the IRS.
-Bob Thaves
Why does a slight tax increase cost you $200 and a substantial tax cut
save you 30 cents?
-Peg Bracken
Categories: Quotes on a topic, Taxes
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