Quotable Quotes: Taxes
by Miki Saxon
April 15; day of dread—or not, depending on whether you’re due a refund or not. And believe it or not, I even managed to avoid blah blah tax quotes from politicians. Are you impressed?
Taxes go way back as does the difference between who pays; as Plato said, “Where there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.”
Ben Franklin’s words are probably the most famous and repeated tax commentary ever said, “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”
Arthur Godfrey summed up most of our feelings when he said, “I am proud to be paying taxes in the United States. The only thing is—I could be just as proud for half the money.”
According to common wisdom, “People who complain about taxes can be divided into two classes: men and women.”
John Maynard Keynes seems to have a philosophical view of tax cheats, “The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still carries any reward.”
Whereas Jean Baptiste Colbert perfectly defines the politics of taxation, “The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest amount of feathers with the least possible amount of squawking.”
Russell B. Long was a U.S. Senator and offers the only perfect, non-partisan description of the loopholes that riddle the US tax code, “A tax loophole is “something that benefits the other guy. If it benefits you, it is tax reform.”
Finally, Leona Helmsley’s comment perfectly describes many of the 1%, as well as the Dirty Thirty, “We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.”
Image credit: 401K
