Quotes On Taxes

Money is power, right?  Our government doesn't have any money of its own - it just takes ours.  In that context, take a look at what some pretty smart people have said about taxation:


"An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation."
-- John Marshall --


"The war against illegal plunder has been fought since the beginning of the world. But how is... legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish this law without delay... If such a law is not abolished immediately it will spread, multiply and develop into a system."
-- Frederic Bastiat --


"Letting the Bush tax cuts expire... would be the largest increase in personal income taxes since World War II... The tax code changes enacted in 2001 and 2003 are scheduled to expire at the end of 2010. If they do, statutory marginal tax rates will rise across the board; ranging from a 13% increase for the highest income households to a 50% increase in tax rates faced by lower-income households. The marriage penalty will be reimposed and the child credit cut by $500 per child. The long-term capital gains tax rate will rise by one-third (to 20% from 15%) and the top tax rate on dividends will nearly triple (to 39.6% from 15%). The estate tax will roar back from extinction at the same time, with a top rate of 55% and an exempt amount of only $600,000. Finally, the Alternative Minimum Tax will reach far deeper into the middle class, ensnaring 25 million tax filers in its web."
-- John Cogan and R. Glenn Hubbard --


"Most of what Congress is constitutionally authorized to spend for is listed in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution and includes: coining money, establish Post Offices, to support Armies and a few other activities. Today's federal budget is over $3 trillion dollars. I challenge anyone to find specific constitutional authority for at least $2 trillion of it. That includes Social Security, Medicare, farm and business handouts, education, prescription drugs and a host of other federal expenditures. Americans who have become accustomed to living at the expense of another American would not want Congress to obey the Constitution, especially if it left out their favorite handout."
-- Walter Williams --


"[W]hen all government...in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided..."
--Thomas Jefferson --


Keep this in mind as you contemplate the $1 trillion in new taxes being proposed by both Clinton and Obama, as well as the traditionally spend-happy Congress.  When will it stop?  Only when American citizens -- including YOU -- stand up and DEMAND they stop.

There's my two cents.