Only "little people" and non-cabinet officials have to pay taxes.

A Plethora of Apropos Quotes


"The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest amount of feathers with the least possible amount of hissing." - Jean Baptiste Colbert (Minister of Finance under Louis XIV, 1668)

"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." - Arthur Godfrey

"What's the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? Well, for one thing, a taxidermist only takes your skin." - Mark Twain

"There are two distinct classes of men...those who pay taxes and those who receive and live upon taxes." - Thomas Paine

"People who complain about taxes can be divided into two classes: men and women." - Anon

"Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others." - Oscar Wilde

"Why does a slight tax increase cost you two hundred dollars, and a substantial tax cut save you thirty cents?" - Peg Bracken

"Taxes and golf are alike. You drive your heart out for the green, and then end up in the hole." - Anon

"The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. Even when you make a tax form out on the level, you don't know when it's through if you are a crook or a martyr." - Will Rogers

"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

"This (preparing my tax return) is too difficult for a mathematician. It takes a philosopher." - Albert Einstein

"A heavy or progressive or graduated income tax is necessary for the proper development of Communism." - Karl Marx

"The Taxpayer.. That's someone who works for the federal government, but doesn't have to take a civil service examination." - Ronald Reagan, U.S. President

"If Patrick Henry thought that taxation without representation was bad, he should see how bad it is with representation." - Farmer's Almanac

"Our forefathers made one mistake. What they should have fought for was representation without taxation." - Fletcher Knebel

"Government is not reason. Government is not eloquence. It is force. And, like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." - George Washington, U.S. President

"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 adminstration, such exaction becomes ruthless extortion and a violation of the fundamental principles of a free Government." - Grover Cleveland, U.S. President

"The federal income tax system is a disgrace to the human race." - Jimmy Carter, U.S. President

"Read my lips. No new taxes." -- George Bush, U.S. President

"I have no intention of raising taxes." - Bill Clinton, U.S. President

"When the President does it, that means it is not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon, U.S. President and attorney

"The only limit on a government's repression is the tolerance of the people it governs." - a 19th century attorney

"Remember, the government doesn't give us rights, our creator does. Government can only deny them to us." - Curt Rich

"Governments don't give rights. Governments take rights away." - Anon

"If we do not change our direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed." - Sam Stoddard

"There are two methods, or means, and only two, whereby man's needs and desires can be satisfied. One is the production and exchange of wealth; this is the economic means. The other is the uncompensated appropriation of wealth produced by others; this is the political means." - Albert Jay Nock

"The politician's promises of yesterday are the taxes of today." - Mackenzie King

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

"It is not from top to bottom that societies die; it is from bottom to top." - Henry George

"The trouble with an income-tax reduction is that it will stimulate business just enough to put everybody in a higher tax bracket." - Harold Coffin

"Nothing is so well calculated to produce a death-like torpor in the country as an extended system of taxation and a great national debt." - William Cobbett

"A society which turns so many of its best and brightest into tax lawyers may be doing something wrong." - Hoffman F. Fuller

"In the matter of taxation, every privilege is an injustice." - Voltaire

"Only little people pay taxes." - Leona Helmsley

"The income tax created more criminals than any other single act of government." - Barry Goldwater, almost U.S. President

"Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed." - Robert Heinlein

"A fool and his money are soon parted." - Aesop

"A fool and your money are soon partners." - Kathleen James

"A fool and your money are soon partying." - Anon

"The Government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend upon the support of Paul." - George Bernard Shaw

"I wouldn't mind paying taxes, if I knew they were going to a friendly country." - Dick Gregory

"The Lottery: a tax on people who are bad at math." - Anon

"The Dime: a dollar with all the taxes taken out." - Anon

"A penny saved is a Congressional oversight." - Lazarus Long

"Tax Relief? Myghod, now they're taxing everything!!" - Mike Jittlov

"Isn't it appropriate that the month of the tax begins with April Fool's Day and ends with cries of 'May Day!'?" - Rob Knauerhase

"A government that is large enough to supply everything you need is large enough to take everything you have." - Thomas Jefferson

"There's nothing wrong with the younger generation that becoming taxpayers won't cure." - Dan Bennett

"Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt." - Herbert Hoover, U.S. President

"The meek shall inherit the work." - Anon

"A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well." - Anon

"I made it, I spent it." - Ernie Kovacs, to an IR$ auditor

"Seizure Fever - Catch It!" - posters in the IR$ Headquarters

"It is the duty of a good shepherd to shear his sheep, not to skin them." - Tiberius Caesar

"In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." - Benjamin Franklin

"We have long had death and taxes as the two standards of inevitability. But there are those who believe that death is the preferable of the two. 'At least,' as one man said, 'there's one advantage about death; it doesn't get worse every time Congress meets'." - Erwin N. Griswold

"It used to be that death and taxes alone were inevitable. Now there's shipping and handling." - Bert Murray

"Death and taxes may be certain, but we don't have to die every year." - Anon

"To lay with one hand the power of the government on the property of the citizen, and with the other to bestow it upon favored individuals to aid private enterprises and build up private fortunes, is none the less a robbery because it is done under the forms of law and is called taxation. This is not legislation. It is a decree under legislative forms." - Citizens' Savings and Loan Association v. City of Topeka, 87 U.S. 655, 664, 20 Wall. 655 (1874)

"It is safest to shut up and pay, which is what I shall eventually do, though I shall hate having to sell the children." - Russell Baker

"If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible." - Henry David Thoreau

"The politicians don't just want your money. They want your soul. They want you to be worn down by taxes until you are dependent and helpless. When you subsidize poverty and failure, you get more of both." - James Dale Davidson

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - the Net's favorite Edmund Burke quote

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Facts about U.S. taxation

Last year there were over 480 different tax forms, each with a trail of instructions - 33 pages just for the "we'll make it simple for you" EZ-1040 short form.

Tax Law mutated from 11,400 words in 1913, to 7,000,000 words in 1999. (For comparison, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address is 269 words, the U.S. Declaration of Independence is 1,337 words, and the King James Bible is about 773,000 words.) Almost 300,000 trees were chopped to render the 8,000,000,000 pages of forms and instructions that the IRS sent out. We paid for all the government postage, of course. We also paid for the accountants and computer calculation programs - since U.S. tax forms are written to be ridiculously complicated, and taxpayers are penalized for not figuring them out.

Of those who called the IRS info hotline, less than helf the callers got through, and of the advice they received, half of it was wrong. America's taxpayers spent 5,400,000,000 man-hours just to complete last year's Federal Tax forms. (Jeeze - what would that be, at minimum wage? What does it cost America in lost production?) Average families paid taxes which consumed over 38% of their income - more than a family's total food, clothing and shelter. A stupifying, mind-boggling waste of time, energy, and life. (source)

The American Revolution wasn't fought over a tea tax, but over the British Monarchy's "divine right" to impose a 3-5% income tax on the Colonists

Medieval serfs paid 25% of their crops to their landlords, but they still got "free" food and land. They didn't even have to turn it into money first, as the heirs of the artist Mark Rothko found when the IRS assessed the value of paintings left to them and wanted to be paid the required taxes IN CASH ( refusing to accept the appropriate value in paintings!) Some enterprising taxpayers attempted to pay the government in the coin of $600 toilet seats or $6000. wrenches paid by the Defense Department -- for value? --by sending in the appropriate number of seats or wrenches.

For the IRS, the taxpayer when accused of derelection is guilty until proven innocent. If your records are deficient, the assumption is not the most reasonable one but, rather, the one that maximizes what you owe.

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My favorite quote above has to do with bestowing the riches of society on "tax lawyers." One of the funniest things I can recall was the occasion of the second Reagan-Mondale debate. I was invited to an "intellectuals viewing" of the debate together with dinner at the home of a very distinguished and wealthy tax lawyer in Chicago. The other guests were a Palestinian journalist and a Yugoslav ( at that time ) journalist. The journalists naturally thought we should all introduce ourselves and the host identified himself appropriately.

I started to laugh to myself because I saw a very quizzical look on the face of the Yugoslav journalist ( not a capitalist country at that time ) and then the torment as he wrestled with the twin forces of journalistic curiosity and politeness toward a gracious host. Finally, he couldn't stand it any more and asked "What IS a tax LAWYER?" It was actually very hard for him to understand why a lawyer would specialize in taxes and obviously be very well compensated for helping a client navigate the tax code even more than, say, a tax accountant.

The idea that a tax lawyer has confidentiality with his client, and can therefore propose things that can never be completely revealed to the IRS, while a mere accountant has to account for his advice and schemes, didn't occur to the journalist -- and actually didn't occur to me until I thought about the exchange. Additionally, a tax lawyer can conjure up a "plausible" effort to find a loophole and, with appropriate legal research, avoid the possibility of penalties ( both civil and criminal ) although interest would still have to be forthcoming if the loophole was discovered and rejected. Actually, I learned later that, in the parlance of tax lawyers, there are no such things as "loopholes": they are "bona fide anomalies in the tax code."