These income tax quotes will inspire you. An income tax is a tax imposed on individuals or entities (taxpayers) in respect of the income or profits earned by them (commonly called taxable income).
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging income tax quotes, income tax sayings, and income tax proverbs.
Best Income Tax Quotes
- “Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others.” ~ Oscar Wilde
- “The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax.” ~ Albert Einstein
- “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
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“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.” ~ Thomas Sowell
- “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.” ~ Ronald Reagan
- “I would like to electrocute everyone who uses the word ‘fair’ in connection with income tax policies.” ~ William F. Buckley, Jr.
- “It is the duty of a good shepherd to shear his sheep, not to skin them.” ~ Tiberius
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“You know, gentlemen, that I do not owe any personal income tax. But nevertheless, I send a small check, now and then, to the Internal Revenue Service out of the kindness of my heart.” ~ David Rockefeller
- “A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.” ~ George Bernard Shaw
- “America is a land of taxation that was founded to avoid taxation.” ~ Laurence J. Peter
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“Hating the Yankees is as American as pizza pie, unwed mothers, and cheating on your income tax.” ~ Mike Royko
- “It was not until the Abraham Lincoln administration that an income tax was imposed on Americans. Its stated purpose was to finance the war, but it took until 1872 for it to be repealed. During the Grover Cleveland administration, Congress enacted the Income Tax Act of 1894. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in 1895. It took the Sixteenth Amendment (1913) to make permanent what the Framers feared — today’s income tax.” ~ Walter E. Williams
- “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. Coleman Andrews
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“This is too difficult for a mathematician. It takes a philosopher. The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.” ~ Albert Einstein
- “There is no income tax in Russia. But there’s no income.” ~ Will Rogers
- “Conventional wisdom on government’s role in inequality often has it backwards. Tax reforms have resulted in a more progressive federal income tax; government transfer payments have become less progressive.” ~ Paul Ryan
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“1913 wasn’t a very good year. 1913 gave us the income tax, the 16th amendment and the IRS.” ~ Ron Paul
- “Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.” ~ H. L. Mencken
- “Taxes, after all, are dues that we pay for the privileges of membership in an organized society.” ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
- “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.” ~ Will Rogers , Income tax quotes money
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“If Thomas Jefferson thought taxation without representation was bad, he should see how it is with representation.” ~ Rush Limbaugh
- “One thing is clear: The Founding Fathers never intended a nation where citizens would pay nearly half of everything they earn to the government.” ~ Ron Paul
- “I can make a firm pledge, under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.” ~ Barack Obama
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“The income tax has made liars out of more Americans than golf.” ~ Will Rogers
- “What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin.” ~ Mark Twain
- “The income tax created more criminals than any other single act of government.” ~ Barry Goldwater
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“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” ~ Dave Barry
- “When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.” ~ Plato
- “Why does a slight tax increase cost you two hundred dollars and a substantial tax cut save you thirty cents?” ~ Peg Bracken
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“Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery.” ~ Calvin Coolidge
- “What at first was plunder assumed the softer name of revenue.” ~ Thomas Paine
- “The only thing that hurts more than paying an income tax is not having to pay an income tax.” ~ Thomas Dewar, 1st Baron Dewar
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“Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today.” ~ Herman Wouk
- “Like mothers, taxes are often misunderstood, but seldom forgotten” ~ George Bramwell, 1st Baron Bramwell
- “Few of us ever test our powers of deduction, except when filling out an income tax form” ~ Laurence J. Peter
- “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.” ~ Robert A. Heinlein
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“The United States has a system of taxation by confession” ~ Hugo Black
- “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
- “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.” ~ Ronald Reagan
- “The best measure of a man’s honesty isn’t his income tax return. It’s the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.” ~ Arthur C. Clarke
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“In this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” ~ Benjamin Franklin
- “On my income tax 1040 it says ‘Check this box if you are blind.’ I wanted to put a checkmark about three inches away.” ~ Tom Lehrer
- “The taxpayer – that’s someone who works for the federal government but doesn’t have to take the civil service examination.” ~ Ronald Reagan
- “There’s no such thing as a good tax.” ~ Winston Churchill
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“Any tax is a discouragement and therefore a regulation so far as it goes.” ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
- “I wouldn’t mind paying taxes… if I knew they were going to a friendly country” ~ Dick Gregory
- “Taxes are indeed very heavy –
We are taxed twice as much by our Idleness.
Three times as much by our Pride.
And four times as much by our Folly.” ~ Benjamin Franklin -
“There is no such thing as a good tax.” ~ Winston Churchill
- “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
- “In levying taxes and in shearing sheep, it is well to stop when you get down to the skin.” ~ Austin O’Malley
- “When you subsidize poverty and failure, you get more of both.” ~ James Dale Davidson
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“I just filled out my income tax forms. Who says you can’t get killed by a blank?” ~ Milton Berle
- “The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison wall.” ~ Denis Healey
- “I have always paid income tax. I object only when it reaches a stage when I am threatened with having nothing left for my old age – which is due to start next Tuesday or Wednesday.” ~ Noel Coward
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“By the year 1982, the graduated income tax will have practically
abolished major differences in wealth.” ~ Irwin Edman
- “The high-income tax come pretty near passing in the Senate. Only lacked about six votes. So it won’t be long now. Well, there is millions and millions that are not making it, that would be glad to give up 99 percent if you would let ’em earn a hundred thousand or more.” ~ Will Rogers
- “The nation’s first experiment with the income tax was tried at this time; another violation of the Constitution.” ~ G. Edward Griffin
- “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.” ~ Luis Gutierrez
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“A lot of girls annoy me who go to university – one girl told me she was going to Oxford because it was something to do between leaving school and getting married. And I’ve got to pay for that being an income taxpayer.” ~ Jeffrey Bernard
- “Withdraw from the Canada Pension Plan… Collect our own revenue from personal income tax… Resume provincial responsibility for healthcare policy. If Ottawa objects to provincial policy, fight in the courts… [E]ach province should raise its own revenue for health… It is imperative to take the initiative, to build firewalls around Alberta.” ~ Stephen Harper
- “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.” ~ Tenzing Norgay
- “I solemnly swear that I will bear true and faithful allegiance to the Queen when she pays her income tax.” ~ Dennis Skinner
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“According to our Christian ethics, we’re supposed to love God, love each other, and help take care of the poor. It is immoral to charge somebody making $5,000 an income tax.” ~ Bob Riley
- “And I don’t see that popular measures, self-abnegation and democracy have done anything for Man but push him further into the mud. Currently, popularity endorses degraded novels, self-abnegation has filled the Southeast Asian jungles with stone idols and corpses, and democracy has given us inflation and income tax.” ~ L. Ron Hubbard
- “We’re going to look awfully stupid if we give income tax relief to people who do not pay income taxes.” ~ Joe Scarborough
Income tax generally is computed as the product of a tax rate times the taxable income.
