I don't like the income tax. Every time we talk about these taxes we get around to the idea of 'from each according to his capacity and to each according to his needs'. That's socialism. It's written into the Communist Manifesto. Maybe we ought to see that every person who gets a tax return receives a copy of the Communist Manifesto with it so he can see what's happening to him.

[T]axes must, in the end, fall upon the consumer.

The fundamental class division in any society is not between rich and poor, or between farmers and city dwellers, but between tax payers and tax consumers.

A citizen can hardly distinguish between a tax and a fine, except that the fine is generally much lighter.

We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.

When more of the people's sustenance is exacted through the form of taxation than is necessary to meet the just obligations of government and expenses of its economical administration, such exaction becomes ruthless extortion and a violation of the fundamental principles of a free government.

There’s a lot of evidence you can sell people on tax increases if they think it’s an investment.

Loophole: To liberals, any provision of the tax code that fails to claim money earned, inherited, saved, or otherwise pocketed by known taxpayers.

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.

The power of collecting and disbursing money at pleasure is the most dangerous power that can be intrusted to man.

CROCKETT, DAVY, The Life of Colonel David Crockett, compiled by Edward S. Ellis, Philadelphia; Porter & Coates, 1884

The power to tax the exercise of a privilege is the power to control or suppress its enjoyment.

The reward of energy, enterprise and thrift - is taxes.

[A]s all history informs us, there has been in every State & Kingdom a constant kind of warfare between the governing & governed: the one striving to obtain more for its support, and the other to pay less. And this has alone occasioned great convulsions, actual civil wars, ending either in dethroning of the Princes, or enslaving of the people. Generally indeed the ruling power carries its point, the revenues of princes constantly increasing, and we see that they are never satisfied, but always in want of more. The more the people are discontented with the oppression of taxes; the greater need the prince has of money to distribute among his partisans and pay the troops that are to suppress all resistance, and enable him to plunder at pleasure. There is scarce a king in a hundred who would not, if he could, follow the example of Pharaoh, get first all the peoples money, then all their lands, and then make them and their children servants for ever.

All taxes are a drag on economic growth. It’s only a question of degree.

Taxes are what we pay for civilized society...A penalty on the other hand is intended altogether to prevent the thing punished.

Taxes grow without rain.

Taxes should be continued by annual or biennial reenactments; because a constant hold by the nation of the strings of the public purse is a salutary restraint from which an honest government ought not to wish nor a corrupt one to be permitted to be free.

[I]f government have a right of demanding ad libitum and of taxing us themselves to the full amount of their demand if we do not comply with it, [this would leave] us without anything we can call property.

Every time in this century we've lowered the tax rates across the board, on employment, on saving, investment and risk-taking in this economy, revenues went up, not down.

An economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenue to balance our budget, just as it will never produce enough jobs or enough profits.

The final and best means of strengthening demand among consumers and business is to reduce the burden on private income and the deterrents to private initiative which are imposed by our present tax system...our present tax system...reduces the financial incentives for personal effort, investment and risk taking.

KENNEDY, PRESIDENT JOHN F., Speech to Economic Club of New York, December 14, 1962

It is perfectly possible...to revive even in our day the fiscal tyranny which once left even European populations in doubt whether it was worth while preserving life by thrift and toil...You have only to take the heart out of those who would willingly labor and save, by taxing them ad misercordiam for the most laudable philanthropic objects.

[I]t makes not the smallest difference to the motives of the thrifty and industrious part of mankind whether their fiscal oppressor be an Eastern despot, or a feudal baron, or a democratic legislature, and whether they are taxed for the benefit of a Corporation called Society, or for the advantage of an individual styled King or Lord.

The power to tax is the power to destroy.

MARSHALL, U.S. SUPREME COURT JUSTICE JOHN, McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)

To lay with one hand the power of government on the property of a citizen, and with the other to bestow it on favored individuals ... is none the less robbery because it was done under the forms of law and is called taxation.

The South fought the [Civil War] for essentially the same reason that the American colonies fought the Revolutionary War. The central grievance...was the taxes imposed...After the enactment of what was called the "Tariff of Abomination" in 1828...the tax on imports ranged between 20-30%. It rose further in March 1861 when Lincoln, at the start of his presidency, signed the Morrill Tariff into law. This tax was far more onerous than the one forced on the American colonies by Britain in the 18th century.

MILLER, JR., DONALD W., The Economic Roots of the Civil War, Liberty, October 2001

Abracadabra, thus we learn

The more you create, the less you earn.

The less you earn, the more you’re given,

The less you lead, the more you’re driven,

The more destroyed, the more they feed,

The more you pay, the more they need,

The more you earn, the less you keep,

And now I lay me down to sleep.

I pray the Lord my soul to take,

If the tax-collector hasn’t got it before I wake.

Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor. Some persons find this claim obviously true: taking the earnings of n hours of labor is like taking n hours from the person; it is like forcing the person to work n hours for another’s purpose.

It is a general idea, that when taxes are once laid on, they are never taken off.

The most delicious of all privileges - spending other people’s money.

We don't have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven't taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much.

The taxpayer - that’s someone who works for the federal government but doesn’t have to take a civil service examination.

A tax, in the general understanding of the term, and as used in the Constitution, signifies an exaction for the support of the Government. The word has never been thought to connote the expropriation of money from one group for the benefit of another.

Taxes are paid in the sweat of every man who labors because they are a burden on production and are paid through production. If those taxes are excessive, they are reflected in idle factories, tax-sold farms and in hordes of hungry people, tramping the streets and seeking jobs in vain.

[T]he only security men can have for their political liberty, consists in keeping their money in their own pockets.

That no government, so called, can reasonably be trusted, or reasonably be supposed to have honest purposes in view, any longer than it depends wholly upon voluntary support.

Government expands to absorb revenue and then some.

Legislative changes in tax policy usually begin as marginal adjustments to the existing tax structure...The tax code offers a variety of easily grasped levers. In this sense, it is an incrementalist paradise, susceptible and seductive to political tinkerers. Aa a result, most changes in tax bills consist of simple adjustments in existing tax provisions.