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Taxes Quotes

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Taxes Quotes

“The more the state gives to its citizens, the less they have to earn. That is the basic concept of the welfare state - you receive almost everything you need without having to earn any of it. About half of Americans now pay no federal income tax - but they receive all government benefits just as if they had paid for, i.e., earned them.”

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Author:Dennis Prager
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“If the present tax rates had been in effect from the beginning of our century, many who are millionaires today would live under more modest circumstances. But all those new branches of industry which supply the masses with articles unheard of before, would operate, if at all, on a much smaller scale, and their products would be beyond the reach of the common man.”

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Book:Planning for freedom, and sixteen other essays and addresses
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“When government taxes and regulates, what is seen are the visible effects of government contracts, grants, and subsidies. What is not seen are all of the property, business, and jobs that would have been created if citizens were left with the right to choose.”

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Book:The Chairman's Corner: Essays on Liberty from the Sovereign Individual
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“I talked to one accountant, a very nice fellow who I would have been glad to have his family marry into mine. He said, "What these other accounting firms have done is very unethical. The [tax avoidance scheme] works best if it's not found out [by the IRS], so we only give it to our best clients, not the rest, so it's unlikely to be discovered. So my firm is better than the others." [Laughter] I'm not kidding. And he was a perfectly nice man. People just follow the crowd...Their mind just drifts off in a ghastly way.”

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Author:Charlie Munger
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“Your generosity is reflected in what you do with your own money, not in what you do with other people's money. If I give a lot of money to charity, then I am generous. If you give a smaller fraction of your money to charity, then you are less generous. But if you want to tax me in order to give my money to charity, that does not make you generous.”

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Author:Arnold Kling
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“The income tax has spawned an intrusive bureaucracy, creating so much complexity and red tape that millions of ordinary citizens have to go get some accountant to fill out the forms for them - and then sign under penalty of perjury that it was done right. If you knew how to do it right, you wouldn't have to go to somebody else to have it done, would you?”

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Author:Thomas Sowell
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“The growing inequality of wealth and income distribution is both a moral and economic problem. If the wealthy are unwilling to pay more taxes, then this is going to lead to spending cuts. And if you put off the table things like national defense, then you're going to end up cutting more and more out of programs that aid the poor. So, I think there are consequences to this idea that tolerance for inequality requires us to - to just do nothing to make the wealthy contribute a higher share of resources to fund the government.”

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Author:Bruce Bartlett
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“The lawyers have escaped most criticism [and undeservedly so]. The tax shelters [were approved by lawyers, who got paid huge commissions to do so] and every miscreant had a high-falutin' lawyer at his side. Why don't more law firms vote with their feet and not take clients who have signs on them that say, "I'm a skunk and will be hard to handle?" I've noticed that firms that avoid trouble over long periods of time have an institutional process that tunes bad clients out. Boy, if I were running a law firm, I'd want a system like that because a lot of firms have a lot of bad clients.”

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Author:Charlie Munger
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“If you're going to buy something which compounds for 30 years at 15% per annum and you pay one 35% tax at the very end, the way that works out is that after taxes, you keep 13.3% per annum. In contrast, if you bought the same investment, but had to pay taxes every year of 35% out of the 15% that you earned, then your return would be 15% minus 35% of 15%-or only 9.75% per year compounded. So the difference there is over 3.5%. And what 3.5% does to the numbers over long holding periods like 30 years is truly eye-opening.”

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Author:Charlie Munger
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“Even if Bush could be forgiven for taking America, and much of the rest of the world, to war on false pretenses, and for misrepresenting the cost of the venture, there is no excuse for how he chose to finance it. His was the first war in history paid for entirely on credit. As America went into battle, with deficits already soaring from his 2001 tax cut, Bush decided to plunge ahead with yet another round of tax "relief" for the wealthy.”

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Author:Joseph Stiglitz
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“I regret that I must so continually use the word genius, as if that should apply only to a caste as well defined from those below as income-tax payers are from the untaxed. The word genius was very probably invented by a man who had small claims on it himself; greater men would have understood better what to be a genius really was, and probably they would have come to see that the word could be applied to most people. Goethe said that perhaps only a genius is able to understand a genius.”

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Author:Otto Weininger
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“President [Barack] Obama's staking his reelection hopes on rebuilding America's middle class. He wants higher taxes on the wealthy, tougher rules on Wall Street, and everyone else to get a fair shot to succeed. Republicans can cry "class warfare" if they want, but as the president put it today, it's about this country's welfare.”

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Author:Chris Matthews
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“Leaving America means renouncing your citizenship, moving out of the country and leaving family and friends behind. You can retain your citizenship if you like, but you'll still be away from loved ones and still be paying taxes. You lose all the good stuff about America and have to keep all the bad stuff.”

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Author:Michael Arrington
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“I kid the Republicans, with love. I feel bad for them. They got nobody for next time. Who are they gonna run? Sarah Palin, reading off her hand. Did you see that? You saw this? She wrote "tax cuts" on her hand. A Republican so stupid she has to be reminded of the one thing - Tax cuts! This is like if you saw the coyote's paw and it said "Road Runner".”

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Author:Bill Maher
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“Sex after one child shows down. After twins... ooh... I'll tell you what it is for us. I'll share it with you. Every three months. We don't plan it that way. That's just how it works out. It's the weirdest thing. You know what I do? Every time I have sex, the next day I pay my estimated tax. My quarterlies are due. If it's oral sex, I renew my driver's license.”

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Author:Ray Romano
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“If President Clinton has his way, we will have a false debate in the 1996 election campaign. It will not engage real political choices - choices framed by our appetite for government services and our distaste for taxes - but rather artificial choices crafted by Clinton to advance his reelection. Clinton has clearly been using the budget as an election platform...I dislike using the word 'lies,' but Clinton exploits such forbearance (widespread in the press) to spread untruths.”

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Author:Robert J. Samuelson
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“The tax incentives are things the music business can emulate. If I own Yesterday by the Beatles and I go to a bank and try to borrow $10,000 and use that song as collateral, they wouldn't know what to do. They would run me out of the bank. Whereas if we get specialized people who know how to appraise the value of intellectual property like songs, catalogs and master recordings, they know how to put some type of value on it. They have this in Nashville and Los Angeles. New Orleans is just starting to get it.”

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Author:Chris Thomas King
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“I think the American people are gonna be reasonable with what do you do with someone who has been in this country for 10 or 12 years who hasn't otherwise violated our laws - because if they're a criminal they can't stay. They'll have to undergo a background check, pay a fine, start paying taxes. And ultimately, they'll given a work permit and that's all they're gonna be allowed to have for at least 10 years.”

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Author:Marco Rubio
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“The message coming out of Washington, especially from our leftist politicians and the news media, is that we solve our budget problems by raising taxes on the rich. If Americans were more informed, such a message would be insulting to our intelligence. There are not enough rich people to satisfy Congress' appetite.”

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Author:Walter E. Williams
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“When you listen to tax-cut rhetoric, remember that giving one class of taxpayer a break requires - now or down the line - that an equivalent burden be imposed on other parties. In other words, if I get a break, someone else pays. Government can't deliver a free lunch to the country as a whole. It can however, determine who pays for lunch.”

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Author:Warren Buffett
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“If we stuck to the Constitution as written, we would have: no federal meddling in our schools; no Federal Reserve; no U.S. membership in the UN; no gun control; and no foreign aid. We would have no welfare for big corporations, or the "poor"; no American troops in 100 foreign countries; no NAFTA, GAT, or "fast-track"; no arrogant federal judges usurping states rights; no attacks on private property; no income tax. We could get rid of most of the agencies, and most of the budget. The government would be small, frugal, and limited.”

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Author:Ron Paul
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“I'm the strongest advocate you can imagine for doing things honestly and paying your taxes. Take advantage of every tax break you're legally entitled to. But I follow the letter of the law, because the consequences are severe if you're caught. I was a perpetrator at one time and suffered severe consequences. It is difficult in some places, but if you live in places like California, move somewhere else to save some money.”

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Author:Michael Franzese
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“In enforcement, you always have to have both a focus on the really worst actors - you know, gang bangers, in this case, drug dealers, that sort of thing - but also routine enforcement because think about, for instance, the IRS. They don't say, OK, well, if you're not a money launderer, it doesn't matter whether you fill your tax return out right or not. They have both. They go after the really bad actors and they have a kind of general, routine enforcement.”

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Author:Mark Krikorian
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“He [Donald Trump] said in the debate - he said, gosh, I'm being audited for two years. Then he said three years. Then he said maybe five years. Listen, if there's a problem in his taxes, the voters have a right to know, because come September, October, the general election, folks in the media are going to make a heyday about any problems in his taxes.”

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Author:Ted Cruz
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