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If we don't do something to simplify the tax system, we're going to end up with a national police force of internal revenue agents.
Sep 10, 2025
The purse of the people is the real seat of sensibility. Let it be drawn upon largely, and they will then listen to truths which could not excite them through any other organ.
There are 11 states in the United States that in the last 50 years instituted an income tax. So I looked at each of those 11 states over the last 50 years, and I took their current economic metrics and their metrics for the five years before they put in the progressive income tax... Every single state that introduced a progressive income tax has declined as an overall share of the U.S. economy.
There is no income tax in Russia. But there's no income.
In levying taxes and in shearing sheep, it is well to stop when you get down to the skin.
There's no such thing as a good tax.
What at first was plunder assumed the softer name of revenue.
The only thing that hurts more than paying an income tax is not having to pay an income tax.
When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.
America is a land of taxation that was founded to avoid taxation.
By the year 1982 the graduated income tax will have practically abolished major differences in wealth.
I'm proud to be paying taxes in the United States. The only thing is - I could be just as proud for half the money
I still believe a majority of Republicans are for income tax cuts.
Why is it that half of the households in America pay zero income tax? We need some real tax reform.
The zero-income-tax-rate states have far faster growth in tax revenues than did the states with highest income tax rate over this period.
There are certain things--as, a spider, a ghost, The income-tax, gout, an umbrella for three-- That I hate, but the thing that I hate the most Is a thing they call the Sea.
gun registration is no more complex than the Income Tax system.
The poverty we see in America is now too widespread, and too complex, for easy fixes. But I do think we can reimagine many of our institutions and can create new ones in ways that would be effective. We could, for example, create social insurance systems, similar to social security, such as that we went through in 2008-9. We could create a financial transaction tax, oil profit taxes and a fairer estate tax system, and we could plow much of the revenue raised from these into job training programs, into better education infrastructure, into an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit.
Income tax in particular in the United States is concentrated on the top half of the income distribution, and very heavily skewed towards the top 10 or even top 1 percent.
If Thomas Jefferson thought taxation without representation was bad, he should see how it is with representation.
A homeless man once told me that dancing to rap music is the cultural equivalent of masturbating, and I'd sort of fell the same way about playing John Madden Football immediately after filing my income tax: It's fun, but - somehow - vaguely pathetic.
The income tax created more criminals than any other single act of government.
The corruption of freedom is in proportion to the moral deterioration of the people. For a people who have lost their sense of self-respect have no need for freedom. And the income tax, by transferring the property of earners to the State, has disintegrated the moral fiber of Americans to such a degree that they do not even recognize the fact.
The corporate income tax, in particular, is a tax that puts American corporations at a disadvantage.
In fact, the corporations are driving out the competition and it is not getting better, especially when they are not paying income taxes. Thank goodness for the social media out there, because we sure can't count on the corporate media to get the word out.
More than half of all people filing income tax forms use someone else to prepare the forms for them. Then they have to sign under penalty of perjury that these forms are correct. But if they were competent to determine that, why would they have to pay someone else to do their taxes for them in the first place?
There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.
A heavy or progressive or graduated income tax is necessary for the proper development of Communism.
It has been a long road. From a mountain coolie, a bearer of loads, to a wearer of a coat with rows of medals who is carried about in planes and worries about income tax.
The taxpayer - that's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take the civil service examination.
In the 1880s, people all over the world looked to America for inspiration. Its very existence was proof that it was possible to have a relatively free and peaceful country. No income tax, no foreign wars, no welfare state, no intrusions on civil liberties.
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.
Recalling that a good chunk of the 47 percent who don't pay income taxes are Romney supporters - especially of course seniors (who might well 'believe they are entitled to heath care,' a position Romney agrees with), as well as many lower-income Americans (including men and women serving in the military) who think conservative policies are better for the country even if they're not getting a tax cut under the Romney plan. So Romney seems to have contempt not just for the Democrats who oppose him, but for tens of millions who intend to vote for him.
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.
Reform immigration to make it easy for individuals to come over here, be documented, pay taxes - immigration reform is needed to state that its about work, its not about welfare... Set up a grace period where they can get a work permit... social security card so that they can pay income tax, social security, Medicare.
The whole trouble with the Republicans is their fear of an increase in income tax, especially on higher incomes. They speak of it almost like a national calamity. I really believe if it come to a vote whether to go to war with England, France and Germany combined, or raise the rate on incomes of over $100,000, they would vote war.
Our federal income tax law defines the tax y to be paid in terms of the income x; it does so in a clumsy enough way by pasting several linear functions together, each valid in another interval or bracket of income. An archeologist who, five thousand years from now, shall unearth some of our income tax returns together with relics of engineering works and mathematical books, will probably date them a couple of centuries earlier, certainly before Galileo and Vieta.
People are tired of working longer hours for lower wages, of seeing decent paying jobs go to China and other low-wage countries, of billionaires not paying any federal income taxes and of not being able to afford a college education for their kids - all while the very rich become much richer.
...How can Americans living in the freest country in the world be 'slaves'? We don't even enjoy the liberty of serfs. ( A serf paid only 25% of his earnings to his feudal lord. How much income tax do you pay?) Don't kid yourselves, we're slaves. Slaves with weekends off.
No one making less than $250,000 under Barack Obama's plan will see one single penny of their tax raised, whether it's their capital gains tax, their income tax, investment tax, any tax.
[High income tax rates] not only check consumption but discourage investment and encourage...the avoidance of taxes [rather] than the production of goods.[...]Our present tax system...reduces the financial incentives for personal effort, investment, and risk-taking.
The requisitions of the income tax have added greatly to the attractions of mercenary crime.
Income tax filing and payment day should be moved from April 15th to November 1st so it can be close to election day. People ought to have their tax bills fresh in mind as they go to vote.
Elections should be held on April 16th- the day after we pay our income taxes. That is one of the few things that might discourage politicians from being big spenders.
Is there another way? Of course there is. There is a way based on simple moral principles: Everyone keeps his own money. Everyone decides what to do with his own money. No income tax. No IRS. No government grants or assistance to anyone. All charity is voluntary. It's called freedom. It's a peaceful, harmonious way of life, one that Americans once believed in.
We are angry about paying the highest income taxes and property taxes in the nation and getting less and less for it. We are angry about our incompetent, dysfunctional government that pays no attention to the desires of the people. We are angry about the cesspool of corruption and conflicts of interests and self-dealing that is Albany.
New Hampshire has always been cheap, mean, rural, small-minded, and reactionary. It's one of the few states in the nation with neither a sales tax nor an income tax. Social services are totally inadequate there, it ranks at the bottom in state aid to education--the state is literally shaped like a dunce cap--and its medical assistance program is virtually nonexistent. Expecting aid for the poor there is like looking for an egg under a basilisk.... The state encourages skinflints, cheapskates, shutwallets, and pinched little joykillers who move there as a tax refuge to save money.
The young man shivered. He rolled the stock themes of fantasy over in his mind: cars and stockbrokers and commuters, housewives and police, agony columns and commercials for soap, income tax and cheap restaurants, magazines and credit cards and streetlights and computers... 'It is escapism, true,' he said, aloud. 'But is not the highest impulse in mankind the urge toward freedom, the drive to escape?
As far as income tax payments go, sources vary in their accounts, but a range of studies find that immigrants pay between $90 billion and $140 billion in Federal, State, and local taxes.
The income tax is the biggest single intrusion suffered by the American people. It forces every worker to be a bookkeeper, to open his records to the government, to explain his expenses, to fear conviction for a harmless accounting error. Compliance wastes billions of dollars. It penalizes savings and creates an enormous drag on the U.S. economy. It is incompatible with a free society, and we aren’t libertarians if we tolerate it.