“I would favor three policies: raising the minimum wage to $12, closing the tax loophole where persons only pay a 15% income tax on long term capital gains (tax it at the full tax rate), and institute a progressive tax moving the highest tax rate from 39.6% to 45%. I would favor implementing these three policies in that order, starting with raising the minimum wage, but not stopping there.” PersonsLongMovingOrderThreeTermPayPolicyTaxesHighestGainsRateStartingFavorsIncomeLong TermProgressiveMinimumStoppingClosingInstituteIncome TaxMinimum WageLoopholesImplementingCapital GainsCapital Gains TaxProgressive Tax Author:Philip Kotler
“We should tax every company's carbon footprint and the carbon footprint of every building and home, to incentivize people to reduce their carbon footprint.” PeopleShouldHomeCompanyBuildingTaxesCarbonFootprintCarbon Footprint Author:Philip Kotler
“Consider how badly-built suburbia is. Many business buildings are not designed to outlast their tax depreciation periods, and the McHouses are made of particle board, vinyl siding, and stapled-on trim. A lot of suburbia will simply become the slums of the future. Most of the rest will be salvage or ruins.” MadeBuildingPeriodsTaxesBuiltRuinsBoardsParticlesSlumsVinylSalvageSuburbiaDepreciationSiding Author:James Howard Kunstler
“The churches rose to power on the income from tax-free property. What earthly -or heavenly- right have they got to enjoy a privilege denied to everyone else, even including nonprofit organizations? None! My contention is that with the churches exempted from property taxation, you and I have to pay that much more in taxes to make up for what they're not contributing.” EnjoyChurchPayTaxesOrganizationPropertyRoseIncludingPrivilegeIncomeHeavenlyDeniedTaxationContributingContentionNonprofits Author:Madalyn Murray O'Hair
“If this taxation exemptions for Church were rescinded, our property taxes would be substantially lowered, and those who rent houses and apartments would consequently be able to pass along this savings in the form of lowered rents. It could have a profoundly salubrious effect on the entire economy.” IfsWould BeAbleFormHouseChurchEconomyEffectsTaxesPropertySavingApartmentTaxationSavingsExemptionProperty Taxes Author:Madalyn Murray O'Hair
“I decided that if nobody else was going to do anything to rectify this colossal inequity in taxation, I'd have to do it myself. So I instituted a suit against the city of Baltimore demanding that the city assessor be specifically ordered to assess the Church for its vast property holdings in the city, and that the city tax collector then be instructed to collect the taxes once the assessment has been made.” IfsHas BeensMadeChurchCitiesTaxesDecidedPropertySuitsTaxationCollectorsAssessmentBaltimoreColossalRectify Author:Madalyn Murray O'Hair
“I'd make an educated guess that 20 to 25 percent of the taxable property in the U.S. is Church-owned.In a recent book, Church Wealth and Business Income, it was estimated that this property -all of it tax-exempt -is worth upwards of 80 billion dollars. I know that's a fantastic, unbelievable figure, but there's every reason to believe that it's on the conservative side; and this amount is increasing yearly at a geometric rate.” KnowsBelieveBookReasonSidesChurchWealthFiguresAmountTaxesPercentDollarsPropertyRateConservativeBillionsIncomeEducatedFantasticUnbelievableGeometric Author:Madalyn Murray O'Hair
“Most employers I speak to, they want to create jobs and give decent salaries. Some small and medium companies say to me they cannot afford to pay the living wage. I say "what about if I gave you a business rate cut?" and they say, yes, ok. We want companies which are skilled up, generating more profit, more corporation tax - we should not be embarrassed at success, as long as they pay their taxes.” IfsWantGivingShouldLongJobsSpeakPayCompanyCuttingTaxesRateProfitMediumsCorporationsDecentEmbarrassedEmployersSalaryLiving Wage Author:Sadiq Khan
“There's this notion that Republicans are the party of Jesus and the Democrats are the Godless party. Let's be clear for a minute. One party wants to give health insurance to the poor and the weak and the dispossessed, and one party wants to take away that health insurance and give tax breaks to rich people. You tell me: which side would Jesus fall on that argument?” PeopleWantGivingFallJesusSidesPoorPartyBreakRichClearMinutesRepublicanTaxesArgumentWeakDemocratNotionRich PeopleTax Breaks Author:Reza Aslan
“It's time to see that there's no such thing as unity in the Democrat Party, ever. They are a disparate coalition of different groups that have one or two unifying precincts: High taxes, Big Government.” TwoDifferentBigsGovernmentPartyGroupsTaxesUnityDemocratCoalitionsBig GovernmentUnifyingHigh Taxes Author:Rush Limbaugh
“What the Tea Parties are standing for is constitutional principle. It's not fundamentally about tax rates or whether to have a consumption tax or an income tax. It's about adherence to Constitution and the principle of limited government.” GovernmentPartyPrinciplesTaxesStandingConstitutionRateIncomeTeaConsumptionIncome TaxTea PartyLimited GovernmentAdherence Author:Robert P. George
“When I left law school, I wanted to go into the government, into the tax policy area. I got the job that I wanted in the International Tax Council's office in Treasury. I arrived determined to change the world. But I discovered very quickly that the world couldn't care less. And I couldn't stomach the lying and stealing that I witnessed. I realized that the only difference between my mother's family and the senators and administrators that I was working with was that the latter wore suits and ties.” WorldCareSchoolLyingPolicyTaxesOfficeDeterminedI RealizedStealingChanging The WorldTreasuryLaw School Author:Dan Burt
“I think the Ronald Reagan tax reform proposals are a step toward distributive justice. They redistribute the tax burden more equitably and more progressively among individuals and call upon business to carry a somewhat larger proportion of the total tax load. Both of these are steps toward equity and distributive justice.” ThinkingIndividualJusticeTaxesBurdenEquityProposal Author:Bruce Babbitt
“Taxes are the flip side of expenditures. The same issues apply on both sides. There are questions of fairness and justice as much in the way you take money away as in the way you disburse it.” JusticeTaxesFairness Author:Bruce Babbitt
“Everybody wants to matter. And that's the sales pitch. So all you have to do is go out and, you know, buy some new kind of newfangled hybrid car or agree to raise taxes or, if you go to the store, buy everything and anything with a green label on it and you are saving the planet.” KindCarTaxesAgreeHybrid Author:Rush Limbaugh
“So, what people are actually left with to spend is maybe 25 to 30% of their income on goods and services, after paying taxes and after paying the FIRE sector (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate). Whether it's housing insurance or mortgage insurance. So there's an idea of distracting people. Don't think of your condition. Think of how the overall economy is doing. But don't think of the economy as an overall unit. Think of the stock market as the economy. Think of the rich people as the economy. Look at the yachts that are made. Somebody's living a lot better. Couldn't it be you?” PeopleThinkingRealEconomyRichTaxesFinanceRich PeopleThink Of YouMortgageYacht Author:Michael Hudson
“Elites play the role today that landlords played under feudalism. They levy interest and financial fees that are like a tax, to support what the classical economists called "unproductive activity."” TodayInterestSupportTaxesFinancialEconomistLandlordFeudalism Author:Michael Hudson
“Income is sucked upward to the creditors, who then foreclose on the assets of debtors. This shrinks tax revenue, forcing public budgets into deficit. And when governments are indebted, they becomemore subject to pressure to privatization of public enterprise.” TaxesEnterprise Author:Michael Hudson
“The current U.S. and Eurozone depression isn't because of China. It's because of domestic debt deflation. Commodity prices and consumer spending are falling, mainly because consumers have to pay most of their wages to the FIRE sector for rent or mortgage payments, student loans, bank and credit card debt, plus over 15 percent FICA wage withholding for Social Security and Medicare actually, to enable the government to cut taxes on the higher income brackets, as well income and sales taxes.” FallCuttingSecurityStudentsTaxesCommodityLoanMortgageCredit CardMedicareStudent Loan Author:Michael Hudson
“I found Viola Desmond was the first woman whose case was taken up in the courts, and it wasn't that she tried to sue them for throwing her out of the theatre; it was that they took the law and used it to arrest her. That was really shocking to me. We had no laws in Canada actually requiring segregation, like they did in the United States. But here we had people using the law - the amusements tax act - to enforce segregation, and our courts allowed them to do that.” PeopleTakenTaxesTheatreSegregationViola Author:Constance Backhouse
“The Trump administration's economic agenda is the right agenda. Corporate taxes have been driving capital and brains and companies overseas for a decade. It has caused huge damage in investment and jobs and productivity. It was a mistake. We have to fix it. Counterintuitively, that usually helps middle-class wages, and lower-class wages, and job formation.” HelpingMistakeBrainEconomicTaxesInvestmentProductivityDriving Author:Jamie Dimon
“I believe American corporations that have gotten so much from our country should be just as patriotic in return. Many of them are, but too many aren't. It's wrong to take tax breaks with one hand and give out pink slips with the other. And I believe Wall Street can never, ever be allowed to wreck Main Street again.” GivingBelieveCountryI BelieveBreakWallTaxesPatriotic Author:Hillary Clinton
“I want the American people to focus on is that we can generate a tremendous amount of energy revenues as result of new taxes coming off of the energy that's underneath the ground here in the United States.” PeopleEnergyFocusTaxes Author:Anthony Scaramucci
“We know through the process of energy independence, our whole geopolitical footprint changes in terms of our national security and how we operate the American military. In addition to that we've got all these forward liabilities on these entitlement programs that, with the right tax and the energy policy, we can pay down and offset some of those liabilities.” EnergyTermSecurityMilitaryPolicyTaxesProgramIndependenceNational SecurityEntitlementFootprintLiability Author:Anthony Scaramucci
“We cut tax exemptions in 1986, it was the most admired tax reform in U.S. history. Congress and the president worked together then to eliminate scores of loopholes and exemptions and deductions; this made taxes much simpler, and allowed a major cut in tax rates.” TogetherPresidentCuttingTaxesRate Author:T.R. Reid
“The Value-Added Tax, a sales tax that applies at every level of business transactions, is an easy tax for governments to collect, and a hard tax to evade.” EasyTaxes Author:T.R. Reid
“Corporations use all sorts of complex stratagems to move their profits overseas, and thus escape the U.S. income tax.” MovingTaxesIncome Tax Author:T.R. Reid
“Relative to the world's other advance democracies, Americans get off easy on tax day. Of the 35 richest countries, the U.S. ranks 32nd in total tax burden.” CountryEasyDemocracyTaxesBurdenRelative Author:T.R. Reid
“President Trump repeatedly says that "America is the highest-taxed country in the world." This is an alternative fact. We pay less in taxes, and our government spends less, as a share of our total wealth, than our counterparts in Western Europe and East Asia. But Trump is right when it comes to corporate tax rates; the U.S. corporate income tax right is among the highest in the world.” WorldCountryPresidentWealthShareTaxesWesternRateIncome Tax Author:T.R. Reid
“Our tax code becomes so absurdly complex every 32 years that we have no choice but to scrap it and re-write. The 32-year period is up in 2018. So the time has come. History tells us that we're going to produce a fairer, simpler tax code by 2018.” ChoicesTaxesCodeScrap Author:T.R. Reid
“White people won't give you nothing because in their minds you don't deserve nothing. If the schools close, the hell with that every church should be a school. And then we should take over the schools in our own community that they closed down. Open them up and then make the government give us our tax dollars that we pay for an education that we don't receive.” PeopleGivingMindSchoolCommunityChurchHellTaxesDeserve Author:Louis Farrakhan
“Give us back our tax dollars that we pay for police who do not serve nor protect. Then maybe we can educate our people, make them a better people and make our community a more decent and safe place to live.” PeopleGivingCommunityProtectTaxesPoliceDecentEducate Author:Louis Farrakhan
“The right U.S. tax policy could positively impact decisions to develop or redevelop new retail and restaurant destinations that make a community great. Policy improvements can grow the economy in communities across the country, spurring investment and new development.” CountryCommunityDecisionEconomyPolicyTaxesInvestmentImprovementPositively Author:Thomas M. McGee
“The U.S. has the most complicated and difficult tax system in the world; we've made it hard to file and pay taxes.” WorldDifficultTaxesComplicated Author:T.R. Reid
“The Value-Added Tax, a sales tax that applies at every level of business transactions, is an easy tax for governments to collect, and a hard tax to evade. So it makes the job of raising revenue easier. The revenues from the VAT can then be used to lower taxes on income and saving and investment. The Value-Added tax doesn't penalize work or saving; it's a tax on buying stuff.” EasyTaxesInvestment Author:T.R. Reid
“Maybe Donald Trump doesn't want the American people to know that he's paid nothing in federal taxes, because the only years that anybody's ever seen were a couple of years when he had to turn them over to state authorities when he was trying to get a casino license, and they showed he didn't pay any federal income tax.” PeopleTryingCoupleTaxesAuthorityIncome Tax Author:Hillary Clinton
“Donald Trump is a - the owner of a lot of real estate that he manages, he may well pay no income taxes. We know for a fact that he didn't pay any income taxes in 1978, 1979, 1984, 1992 and 1994. We know because of the reports of the New Jersey Casino Control Commission. We don't know about any year after that.” RealTaxesManageIncome Tax Author:Hillary Clinton
“People like Donald Trump can take all the money that's made from a TV show, from selling neckties made in China, running golf courses, and wipe out that income for tax purposes with depreciation. Only a narrow segment of people qualify for this.” PeopleRunningPurposeTaxesGolfSellingGolf Course Author:Hillary Clinton
“If you're a full-time manager of your own property - and full-time, according to Congress, is 15 hours a week - you can take unlimited depreciation and use it to offset your income from other areas and pay little in tax. One of the biggest real estate tax lawyers in New York said to me, if you're a major real estate family and you're paying income taxes, you should sue your tax lawyer for malpractice.” RealHoursWeekTaxesPropertyLawyerIncome Tax Author:Hillary Clinton
“Congress has all sorts of rules, hedge fund managers, private equity managers, executives, movie stars, fall into that allow them to escape or defer into the future not paying their taxes. And if you can defer your tax into the future, it's the best deal in the world, because you don't just get to eat your cake and have it too. You get to eat your cake and have a bigger cake.” WorldFallTaxesFundEquityMovie Star Author:Hillary Clinton
“I don't think most Americans understand that, for certain very wealthy people, our federal income tax system is a subsidy system that makes them richer.” PeopleThinkingTaxesWealthyIncome Tax Author:Hillary Clinton
“The 1984 tax trials, when he appealed his New York state and New York City audits, were about Donald Trump claiming zero revenue for his consulting business and taking over $600,000 of deductions, for which he couldn't produce any documentation, no receipts, no checks, nothing, those two elements, zero income and huge deductions, combined with his own tax guy testifying under oath, that's my signature, but I didn't prepare that tax return, those are very strong badges of fraud.” GuyStrongTaxesFraudVery StrongOath Author:Hillary Clinton
“Seen in the context of Donald Trump having committed sales tax fraud in the past, which is indisputable, I think that it's reasonable for the American public to ask, did you go beyond what's lawful, maybe scandalously lawful, but lawful, and violate the law?” ThinkingPastTaxesCommittedFraud Author:Hillary Clinton
“Donald Trump participated in something known as the empty box scam. He bought $65,000 worth of jewelry from Bulgari across the street from Trump Tower, and had the record show that it was mailed to him in an out-of-state address. Now, if you're not a New York resident, you may not have to pay sales tax if the jewelry is mailed to you in another state. The problem is, they were empty boxes. It was proven.” ProblemTaxesEmptyJewelry Author:Hillary Clinton
“Lots of people commit crimes and don't get arrested. That's not the measure. But if you're going to be the president of the United States, we're reasonably going to put you under a microscope. And Donald Trump's tax behavior is absolutely important to understanding, is he qualified, is he morally fit, is he capable, is he trustworthy to have everything from the powers of federal law enforcement to the nuclear codes?” PeopleImportantUnderstandingPresidentCrimeFitTaxesBehaviorCapableCommitCodeLaw EnforcementTrustworthy Author:Hillary Clinton
“It used to be that we taxed property - zapped farmers basically. And there were very rich people who didn't pay that much tax. So in 1913, they put in the income tax. It was incredibly popular. The tax we love to hate today.” PeopleTodayHateRichTaxesPropertyFarmersRich PeopleIncome TaxLove Hate Author:T.R. Reid
“The income tax only taxed the Rockefellers, the Morgans and the Vanderbilts. It was aimed at the top 4 percent, and the top rate then in 1913, was 7 percent. Woodrow Wilson had a big ceremony and said, "I'm delighted to be president at the creation of this popular new tax."” PresidentCreationTaxesRateCeremonyIncome Tax Author:T.R. Reid
“It was an easy thing to tax for a young country. And then gradually we moved to property taxes, manufacturing taxes, and the income tax was the answer to a populist demand: Let's go after the rich guys. We got into World War I, and they raised the rates and started taxing the rich. Then we got into World War II, and that's when they taxed everybody, because they just needed more revenue.” WorldWarCountryGuyEasyRichTaxesMovedPropertyRateWar Of The WorldsWorld War IiWorld War IIncome TaxPopulist Author:T.R. Reid
“France, they're the world champion at soaking the rich on taxes. And at one point, they had what they called a hyper tax, 75 percent, and Gérard Depardieu and many others left the country.” WorldCountryRichTaxesChampionHyper Author:T.R. Reid
“The higher the rate, the more interest there is in avoiding the tax. Either you move or you shift your profits overseas, as American corporations have proven very good at doing.” MovingInterestTaxesRateVery GoodAvoiding Author:T.R. Reid