QUOTES ABOUT TAXES

Taxes got you feeling blue? Don't despair! Here are a slew of famous (and not so famous) quotes to make your tax season a bit less taxing. Enjoy!

1. Adam Smith: "Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things."
2. Al Capone: "They can't collect legal taxes from illegal money."
3. Albert Bushnell Hart: "Taxation is the price which civilized communities pay for the opportunity of remaining civilized."
4. Albert Camus: Note, besides, that it is no more immoral to directly rob citizens than to slip indirect taxes into the price of goods that they cannot do without."
5. Albert Einstein: "The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax."
6. Alfred E. Neuman: "Today, it takes more brains and effort to make out the income-tax form than it does to make the income."
7. Andrew Cuomo: "New York State is upside down and backwards; high taxes and low performance."
8. Anonymous: "A fine is a tax for doing something wrong. A tax is a fine for doing something right."
9. Anonymous: "A person doesn't know how much he has to be thankful for until he has to pay taxes on it."
10. Anonymous: "Of life's two certainties, the only one for which you can get an automatic extension."
11. Anonymous: "People who complain about taxes can be divided into two classes: men and women."
12. Anonymous: "The best things in life are free, but sooner or later the government will find a way to tax them."
13. Arthur C. Clarke: "The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale."
14. Arthur Godfrey: "I'm proud to pay taxes in the United States; the only thing is, I could be just as proud for half the money."
15. Arthur Vanderbilt: "Taxes are the lifeblood of government and no taxpayer should be permitted to escape the payment of his just share of the burden of contributing thereto."
16. Austin O'Malley: "In levying taxes and in shearing sheep it is well to stop when you get down to the skin."
17. Barack Obama: "We've got a tax code that is encouraging flight of jobs and outsourcing. And that's why we've specifically recommended ... that Congress change our tax code so that we stop giving tax breaks to companies that are moving to Mexico and China and other places, and start putting those tax breaks into companies that are investing here in the United States."
18. Barry Goldwater: "The income tax created more criminals than any other single act of government."
19. Bauvard: "Every culture has some ritual for joining two people together and making them stay that way, and ours is giving tax breaks."
20. Benjamin Franklin: "Friends and neighbors complain that taxes are indeed very heavy, and if those laid on by the government were the only ones we had to pay, we might the more easily discharge them; but we have many others, and much more grievous to some of us. We are taxed twice as much by our idleness, three times as much by our pride, and four times as much by our folly."
21. Benjamin Franklin: "Our new Constitution is now established, everything seems to promise it will be durable; but, in this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes."
22. Benjamin Tucker: "To force a man to pay for the violation of his own liberty is indeed an addition of insult to injury."
23. Bill Archer: "We must care for each other more, and tax each other less."
24. Bob Dole: "The purpose of a tax cut is to leave more money where it belongs: in the hands of the working men and working women who earned it in the first place."
25. Bob Thaves: "I don't know if I can live on my income or not--the government won't let me try it."
26. Bonnie Raitt: Solar power is the last energy resource that isn't owned yet--nobody taxes the sun yet."
27. Boris I. Bittker: "The layman is far more inclined than the expert to trust paperwork as a shield against tax liability. Tax lawyers are bombarded at cocktail parties with tax schemes, offered as proof positive of the speaker's astute sophistication, that would not convince the most inexperienced revenue agent or that teeter on the brink of fraud."
28. Calvin Coolidge: "Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery."
29. Chris Rock: "You don't pay taxes--they take taxes."
30. Dan Bennett: "There's nothing wrong with the younger generation that becoming taxpayers won't cure."
31. Dave Barry: "Congresspersons are too busy raising campaign money to read the laws they pass. The laws are written by staff tax nerds who can put pretty much any wording they want in there. I bet that if you actually read the entire vastness of the U.S. Tax Code, you'd find at least one sex scene."
32. Dave Barry: "It's income tax time again, Americans: time to gather up those receipts, get out those tax forms, sharpen up that pencil, and stab yourself in the aorta."
33. David Frum: "The big winners under the American fiscal system are the rich, who pay some of the lowest taxes anywhere in the world; the old, who are the main beneficiaries of the American social service state; farmers, rural people. These are Republican constituencies."
34. David Mazzucchelli: "Yes: here's to the founding fathers--slave-owning British citizens who didn't want to pay taxes..."
35. Edmund Burke: "To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men."
36. Erving Goffman: "Man is not like other animals in the ways that are really significant: animals have instincts, we have taxes."
37. Evan Esar: "Some taxpayers close their eyes, some stop their ears, some shut their mouths, but all pay through the nose."
38. F.J. Raymond: "Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as satisfying as an income tax refund."
39. Franklin D. Roosevelt: "Taxes are paid in the sweat of every man who labors."
40. Franklin P. Adams: "Count the day won when, turning on its axis, this earth imposes no additional taxes."
41. Franklin Roosevelt: "Taxation according to income is the most effective instrument yet devised to obtain just contribution from those best able to bear it and to avoid placing onerous burdens upon the mass of our people."
42. Frederick the Great: "No government can exist without taxation. This money must necessarily be levied on the people; and the grand art consists of levying so as not to oppress."
43. George H.W. Bush: "Read my lips: no new taxes."
44. George Sutherland: "The legal right of a taxpayer to decrease the amount of what otherwise would be his taxes, or altogether to avoid them, by means which the law permits, cannot be doubted."
45. Gerald Barzan: "Taxation with representation ain't so hot either."
46. Grover Cleveland: "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 free government."
47. H.L. Mencken: "Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages."
48. Ha-Joon Chang: "Once you realize that trickle-down economics does not work, you will see the excessive tax cuts for the rich as what they are--a simple upward redistribution of income, rather than a way to make all of us richer, as we were told."
49. Herman Wouk: "Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today."
50. Holly Sklar: "Taxes are how we pool our money for public health and safety, infrastructure, research, and services--from the development of vaccines and the Internet to public schools and universities, transportation, courts, police, parks, and safe drinking water."
51. Hugo Black: "The United States has a system of taxation by confession."
52. J.C. Watts: "Death and taxes may be inevitable, but they shouldn't be related."
53. Jack Canfield: "I have lived by one crucial principle since I was 24 years old. I don't blame or complain about things like the economy, the government, taxes, employees, gas prices, or any of the external things that I don't have control over. The only thing I have control over is my response to these things."
54. James M. Wayne: "The payment of taxes gives a right to protection."
55. James Madison: "I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents."
56. Jean Baptist Colbert: "The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to get the most feathers with the least hissing."
57. Jeff Foxworthy: "If your biggest tax deduction was bail money, you might be a redneck."
58. John Andrew Holmes: "If the Lord loveth a cheerful giver, how he must hate the taxpayer!"
59. John Marshall: "The power to tax is the power to destroy."
60. John Maynard Keynes: "The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that carries any reward."
61. John S. Coleman: "What the government gives it must first take away."
62. John Sherman: "We are told that this is an odious and unpopular tax. I never knew a tax that was not odious and unpopular with the people who paid it."
63. Joseph Bonkowski: "The best things in life are tax free."
64. Joyce Marcel: "For patriots like me, paying taxes gives a feeling of responsibility, of being part of the fabric of our country, of contributing to the common good."
65. Judith Martin: "The invention of the teenager was a mistake. Once you identify a period of life in which people get to stay out late but don't have to pay taxes--naturally, no one wants to live any other way."
66. Lao Tzu: "The people are hungry: It is because those in authority eat up too much in taxes."
67. Laurence J. Peter: "America is a land of taxation that was founded to avoid taxation."
68. Laurence J. Peter: "Few of us ever test our powers of deduction, except when filling out an income tax form."
69. Leon Panetta: "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."
70. Leona Helmsley: "We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes."
71. Lord Bramwell: "Like mothers, taxes are often misunderstood, but seldom forgotten."
72. Marco Rubio: "We don't need new taxes. We need new taxpayers, people that are gainfully employed, making money and paying into the tax system."
73. Margaret Mitchell: "Death, taxes and childbirth! There's never any convenient time for any of them."
74. Mark Cuban: "While some people might find it distasteful to pay taxes, I don't. I find it patriotic."
75. Mark Twain: "I shall never use profanity except in discussing house rent and taxes."
76. Mark Twain: "What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin."
77. Martin A. Sullivan: "There may be liberty and justice for all, but there are tax breaks only for some."
78. Martin D. Ginsburg: "There is an ancient belief that the gods love the obscure and hate the obvious. Without benefit of divinity, modern men of similar persuasion draft provisions of the Internal Revenue Code. Section 341 is their triumph."
79. Max Baucus: "Tax complexity itself is a kind of tax."
80. Mignon McLaughlin:"Philosophy teaches a man that he can't take it with him; taxes teach him he can't leave it behind either."
81. Milton Friedman: "Congress can raise taxes because it can persuade a sizable fraction of the populace that somebody else will pay."
82. Milton Friedman: "We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork."
83. Morgan Stanley: "You must pay taxes. But there's no law that says you gotta leave a tip."
84. Nancie J. Carmody: "I am thankful for the taxes I pay because it means that I'm employed."
85. Oliver Wendell Holmes: "Any tax is a discouragement and therefore a regulation so far as it goes."
86. P. J. O'Rourke: In theory, taxes should be like shopping. What I buy is government services. What I pay are my taxes.:
87. Paul Leroy_Beaulieu: "Taxes are simply contributions demanded of citizens as their share of the expenses of government."
88. Paula Poundstone: "The wages of sin are death, but after they take the taxes out, it's more like a tired feeling, really."
89. Peg Bracken: "Why does a slight tax increase cost you two hundred dollars and a substantial tax cut save you thirty cents?"
90. Plato: "When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income."
91. Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Of all debts, men are least willing to pay their taxes; what a satire this is on government."
92. Randolph Paul: "Above all things, a tax attorney must be an indefatigable skeptic; he must discount everything he hears and reads. The market place abounds with unsound avoidance schemes which will not stand the test of objective analysis and litigation."
93. Richard Carlson: "At tax time, it helps to remember that if your tax obligation has increased from the previous year, it's usually because you're enjoying more income. That's a situation to which most of us aspire. Higher taxes are a price that we pay for greater success."
94. Richard Carlson: "Many people believe that where taxes are concerned, they are victims, held hostage by an inevitable process that allows them no input, no control. This passive approach becomes something of a self-fulfilling prophecy; where people believe that they lack control, they seldom try to assert control."
95. Rob Knauerhase: "Isn't it appropriate that the month of the tax begins with April Fool's Day and ends with cries of 'May Day!'?"
96. Robert A. Heinlein: "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."
97. Robert Brault: "The IRS is an agency modeled after the revenue raising concepts of the 19th century economist, Jesse James."
98. Robert Half: "People try to live within their income so they can afford to pay taxes to a government that can't live within its income."
99. Robert Heinlein: "Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors... and miss."
100. Robert Quillen: "Another difference between death and taxes is that you don't have to work like fury to pay for the dying you did last year."
101. Roger Jones: "I guess I think of lotteries as a tax on the mathematically challenged."
102. Ron Paul: "One thing is clear: The Founding Fathers never intended a nation where citizens would pay nearly half of everything they earn to the government."
103. Ron Paul: Income taxes are responsible for the transformation of the Federal government from one of limited powers into a vast leviathan whose tentacles reach into almost every aspect of American life."
104. Ronald Reagan: "The government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it."
105. Ronald Reagan: "The taxpayer--that's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take the civil service examination."
106. Ronald Reagan: "You can't tax business. Business doesn't pay taxes. It collects taxes."
107. Russell B. Long: "A tax loophole is something that benefits the other guy. If it benefits you, it is tax reform."
108. Snoopy: "Dear IRS, I am writing to you to cancel my subscription. Please remove my name from your mailing list."
109. Stephen King: "The rope by which the great blocks of taxes are attached to any citizenry is simple loyalty--loyalty to King, to country, to government."
110. Steve Forbes: "The flat tax would be so simple, you could fill it out on a post card. A post card that would say, in effect, having a wonderful time; glad most of my money is here."
111. Steve Forbes: "The politicians say 'we' can't afford a tax cut. Maybe we can't afford the politicians."
112. Steven LaTourette: "Our tax code is so long it makes War and Peace seem breezy."
113. Terri Guillemets: "I can give you 1040 good reasons we should improve our government."
114. Thomas Jefferson: "To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical."
115. Thomas Paine: "Invention is continually exercised, to furnish new pretenses for revenues and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without tribute."
116. Thomas Paine: "What at first was plunder assumed the softer name of revenue."
117. Thomas Paine: War involves in its progress such a train of unforeseen circumstances that no human wisdom can calculate the end; it has but one thing certain, and that is to increase taxes."
118. Thomas Sowell: "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."
119. Vanya Cohen: "When there's a single thief, it's robbery. When there are a thousand thieves, it's taxation."
120. Walter B. Wriston: "All the Congress, all the accountants and tax lawyers, all the judges, and a convention of wizards all cannot tell for sure what the income tax law says."
121. Warren Buffett: "If anything, taxes for the lower and middle class and maybe even the upper middle class should even probably be cut further. But I think that people at the high end--people like myself--should be paying a lot more in taxes. We have it better than we've ever had it."
122. Will Rogers: "Alexander Hamilton started the U.S. Treasury with nothing and that was the closest our country has ever been to being even."
123. Will Rogers: "Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for."
124. Will Rogers: "If you make any money, the government shoves you in the creek once a year with it in your pockets, and all that don't get wet you can keep."
125. Will Rogers: "The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has."
126. Will Rogers: "The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets."
127. William Cobbett: "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."
128. William Simon: "The nation should have a tax system that looks like someone designed it on purpose."
129. Winston Churchill: "There is no such thing as a good tax."
130. Winston S. Churchill: "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."