Tax Reform Quotes

We need to stop kicking the can down the road and rethink our entire tax system toward long-term, comprehensive tax reform. ~ Brad Schneider

A tax loophole is something that benefits the other guy. If it benefits you, it is tax reform. ~ Russell B. Long

We must move from revenue-neutral to revenue-reducing tax reform, because the federal government spends far too much money. ~ Carly Fiorina

The American economy is driven by small business. And there's nothing basically to create incentives for small businesses. We've done no tax reform. They're the highest-taxed group in the country. And corporations can go anywhere they want and do whatever they want. Small businesses have to stay ... ~ Ed Rollins

Tax reform is a once-in-a-generation opportunity. ~ Max Baucus

The key to revenue growth is tax reform that closes loopholes and that is pro-growth. Then with a growing economy, that's where your revenue growth comes in, not from higher taxes. ~ John Hoeven

When I worked in the White House for President Carter, we tried to do comprehensive tax reform and we made some progress, and other presidents have as well. ~ David Rubenstein

[T]ax cuts are not just something that all taxpayers deserve, but also the best way to curb government spending. It is the best kind of tax reform. If the money never reaches the table, Congress can't gobble it up. ~ Zell Miller

Have you ever noticed how statists are constantly "reforming" their own handiwork? Education reform. Health-care reform. Welfare reform. Tax reform. The very fact they're always busy "reforming" is an implicit admission that they didn't get it right the first 50 times. ~ Lawrence W. Reed

Tax reform means, 'Don't tax you, don't tax me. Tax that fellow behind the tree.' ~ Russell B. Long

Most televangelists, popular Christian preacher icons, and heads of those corporations that we call megachurches share an unreflective modern view of Jesus--that he translates easily and almost automatically into a modern idiom. The fact is, however, that Jesus was not a person of the twenty-first century who spoke the language of contemporary Christian America (or England or Germany or anywhere else). Jesus was inescapably and ineluctably a Jew living in first-century Palestine. He was not like us, and if we make him like us we transform the historical Jesus into a creature that we have invented for ourselves and for our own purposes.

Jesus would not recognize himself in the preaching of most of his followers today. He knew nothing of our world. He was not a capitalist. He did not believe in free enterprise. He did not support the acquisition of wealth or the good things in life. He did not believe in massive education. He had never heard of democracy. He had nothing to do with going to church on Sunday. He knew nothing of social security, food stamps, welfare, American exceptionalism, unemployment numbers, or immigration. He had no views on tax reform, health care (apart from wanting to heal leprosy), or the welfare state. So far as we know, he expressed no opinion on the ethical issues that plague us today: abortion and reproductive rights, gay marriage, euthanasia, or bombing Iraq. His world was not ours, his concerns were not ours, and--most striking of all-- ~ Bart D. Ehrman

Tax reform and expanded trade are going to be so important to the economy of Illinois, particularly the 11th Congressional District, which is a major manufacturing and a major agricultural district. ~ Jerry Weller

I'm not for a temporary war tax. We're putting actual dollars in one way or the other, and so if we're gonna look at taxes, we ought to look at a comprehensive tax reform policy. ~ Stephen Pagliuca

The billionaires pay an effective tax rate lower than nurses or truck drivers. That makes no sense at all. There has to be real tax reform, and the wealthiest and large corporations will pay. ~ Bernie Sanders

The important thing about tax reform is you make the tax code less complicated, easier for people to understand. ~ Grover Norquist

Tax reform is taking the taxes off things that have been taxed in the past and putting taxes on things that haven't been taxed before. ~ Art Buchwald

We pursued the wrong policies. George Bush is not on the ballot. Bill Clinton is not on the ballot. Mitt Romney is on the ballot, and Barack Obama is on the ballot. And Mitt Romney is proposing tax reform, regulatory reform, a wise budget strategy and trade. The president has proposed tax increases. ~ Glenn Hubbard

Fundamental [tax] reform almost always runs the risk of making things worse. ~ Dan Rostenkowski

I think we can have some tax reform, but that doesn't mean tax increases. We ought to make the, the rates flatter. We ought to get rid of a bunch of those loopholes. ~ John Kasich

We all want a simpler code, but tax reform is about much more. It is about ensuring that everyone pays their fair share. The tax code is also used to promote behavior that we as a nation support, such as home ownership or charitable contributions. ~ Charles B. Rangel

We're going to do tax reform to let people keep more of what they earn, grow an economy, and be able to save for your children's future and buy a new house. ~ Kevin McCarthy

We need to enact fundamental tax reform. The weight and complexity of our 73,000-page tax code are crushing everyday Americans. We need to radically simplify the tax code so that we can re-start the real engine of growth in our economy. That means our tax code needs to go from 73,000 pages down to about three pages. ~ Carly Fiorina

When Congress talks of tax reform, grab your wallet and run for cover. ~ Steve Symms

Tax reform has been used as a crutch, as a smokescreen and as candy coating for the hard choices that have to be made. ~ Sir Arthur Sullivan

If you have to change the law to get more money, that's a tax increase, and Americans for Tax Reform supports all efforts of tax reform, getting rid of deductions or credits, or something that's misclassified, as long as you at the same time reduce rates so that it's not a hidden tax. ~ Grover Norquist

Rather than passing a thousand pages of tax reform legislation and restarting the tax code manipulation process, we should change the paradigm. It is time to eliminate the IRS and repeal the 16th Amendment. ~ Jim Bridenstine

The day after Republicans won solid majorities in the House and Senate, House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader-to-be Mitch McConnell outlined priorities for the newly elected Congress. High on the list is fundamental tax reform. In addition to overhauling the federal tax code, however, Congress should rein in the Internal Revenue Service. ~ Cleta Mitchell

Obama's Democrats have become the part of no. Real cuts to federal budget? No. Entitlement reform? No. Tax reform? No. Breaking the corrupt and fiscally unsustainable symbiosis between public-sector unions and state governments? Hell no. ~ Charles Krauthammer

I wish that the Democrats would put some effort into Social Security reform, illegal immigration's reform, tax reform, or some of the other real issues that are out there. ~ Jack Kingston

We need real tax reform which makes the rich and profitable corporations begin to pay their fair share of taxes. We need a tax system which is fair and progressive. Children should not go hungry in this country while profitable corporations and the wealthy avoid their tax responsibilities by stashing their money in the Cayman Islands. ~ Bernie Sanders

I'm in favor of doing tax reform, but I think tax reform ought to be revenue neutral as it was back during the [Ronald] Reagan years. We've resolved this issue. ~ Mitch McConnell

I'm for tax reform, not tax increases. ~ Grover Norquist

No longer would other nations, other economies, be taking business and jobs away from the U.S. economy by enacting their own valuable tax reform and simplification measures. As these nations have enjoyed steady gains, we have distracted ourselves with a cacophony of politicians, from both sides of the aisle, yammering about their favorite ideas for using our federal tax code to punish people they don't like while rewarding people and industries they do. ~ Neal Boortz

I think in 2012 one of the primary issues that will get a lot of discussion will be comprehensive tax reform. ~ Tom Reed

It's not coincidence that the U.S. is in last place in the world in terms of corporate tax rate. It's because our system is set up to block tax reform. ~ David Malpass

What I heard was that Bush is now positioned to have victory after victory. He'll have Social Security reform passed, that he'll have tax reform passed, that he'll have conservative judges on the courts. ~ Pat Robertson

Tax (reform) is ultimately a decision about values. ~ Bill Bradley

I am convinced that if most members of Congress did their own taxes, we would have had tax reform long ago. ~ Bill Archer

I may sound naive, since everyone's decided the next two years are going to be all about 2016, but I look at what's happened over the years when there's been divided government. That's when we've done tax reform, that's when we've done entitlement reform - to move this economy forward on these big issues. ~ Rob Portman

I'm not feeling undertaxed. Tax reform is an important issue. You have to have an inherent sense of fairness. ~ Stephen A. Schwarzman

Reform is not for the short-winded. I'm committed to making sure the Senate is more than just a graveyard for good ideas. ~ Mark Udall

I would support eliminating certain tax breaks that are not economically justifiable if they are offset with reductions in tax rates. ~ Jason Chaffetz

I've got people handling the media. I employ at the moment two people. No-one is paying income tax on the money they use to employ people. ~ Ken Livingstone

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. ~ Barack Obama

Now we Democrats, well, we're all for higher taxes, right? But man do we hate to pay those taxes, and most of the politicians I worked for took advantage of every tax loophole they could find, and if they couldn't find it, they'd just legislate one out of thin air. That's the D.C. way. Tax policy is a means to buy votes, but at the end of the day, we all share in a mutual disdain for government. It's ~ D.W. Ulsterman

I find nothing healthful or exalting in the smooth conventions of society. I do not like the close air of saloons. I begin to suspect myself to be a prisoner, though treated with all this courtesy and luxury. I pay a destructive tax in my conformity. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Employees make the best dates. You don't have to pick them up and they're always tax-deductible. ~ Andy Warhol

We've subsidized oil companies for a century. That's long enough. It's time to end the taxpayer giveaways to an industry that rarely has been more profitable, and double-down on a clean energy industry that never has been more promising. Pass clean energy tax credits. Create these jobs. ~ Barack Obama

Don't promote yourself as a country of constitutionality and compassion if you honestly believe that putting people in prison and treating them like animals is justified. Stop all the hype that we live in a free and democratic society. I used to ramble on about the same stuff. But now - are we really a country that believes in fairness and compassion? Are we really a country that treats people fairly?

I've met good men - yes, good men - in prison who made mistakes out of stupidity or ignorance, greed, or just bad judgment, but they did not need to be sent to prison to be punished; eighteen months for catching too many fish; two years for inflating income on a mortgage application; three months for selling a whale's tooth on eBay; fifteen years for a first-time nonviolent drug conspiracy in which no drugs were found or seized. There are thousands of people like these in our prisons today, costing American taxpayers billions of dollars when these individuals could be punished in smarter, alternative ways.

Our courts are overpunishing decent people who make mistakes, and our prisons have no rewards or incentives for good behavior. In this alone criminal justice and prison systems contradict their own mission statements (244). ~ Bernard B. Kerik

If a budget is designed to show our values, it's clear where the majority stands: against opportunity, against education, and against America's hard-working, tax-paying middle class. ~ Ellen Tauscher

If there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. ~ David Stockman

As the head of the government, it is my responsibility to make the overriding political goals and relationships more clear. Part of the reason the public didn't understand some of the reforms enacted during the past legislative period was that there was far too much talk about the details, while the general picture often remained invisible. ~ Angela Merkel

There comes not seldom a crisis in the life of men, of nations, and of worlds, when the old forms seem ready to decay, and the old rules of action have lost their binding force. The evils of existing systems obscure the blessings that attend them, and, where reform is needed, the cry is raised for subversion. ~ Benjamin N. Cardozo

All sensible politicians favor growth, just as we all favor sound public finances. Both can be achieved if we rationalize spending, invest available resources wisely, and clamp down on tax evasion. ~ Victor Ponta

[Health reform] will destroy the country [because] in the next year or so [America will have to] dramatically cut the military because we can't pay for it. ~ Rick Santorum

I'm still one who says that we can get rid of the Internal Revenue Service if we would pass the fair tax, which is a tax on consumption rather than a tax on people's income, and move power back where the founders believed it should have been all along. ~ Mike Huckabee

2009: e-mails obtained via the Freedom of Information Act revealed that White House Associate Director of Public Engagement was arranging an NEA-hosted telephone conference with tax-supported artists to encourage the creation of propaganda art to generate public support for President Obama's political agendas. ~ Alexandra York

I'd think people would want me to follow the law and pay only what the tax code requires. ~ Mitt Romney

When I was mayor of New York, my views changed. I began as mayor of New York City thinking that I could reform the New York City school system. After two or three years, four years, I became an advocate of choice, of scholarships, and vouchers, and parental choice, because I thought that was the only way to really change the school system. ~ Rudy Giuliani

Our immigration policy should be driven by what is in the best interest of this great country and the American people. Comprehensive immigration reform will strengthen U.S. security and boost economic growth. ~ Charles B. Rangel

It would be a great reform in politics if perception could be made to spread as easily and as rapidly as foolishness. ~ Winston Churchill

I have never played the lottery in my life and never will. Voltaire described lotteries as a tax on stupidity. More specifically, I think, on innumeracy. ~ Daniel Tammet

Democrats are not about to nominate anyone who backs the tax cut, and Americans are not going to elect anyone who favors a tax increase. ~ Dick Morris

As income taxes and capital-gains taxes were reduced in the United States beginning in the 1980s, the share of federal taxes paid by "the rich" steadily went up. From 1980 to 2010, as the top 1 percent increased their share of before-tax income from 9 percent to 15 percent, their share of the individual income tax soared from 17 percent to 39 percent of the total paid. Their share of total federal taxes more than doubled during a period when the highest marginal tax rate was cut in half, from 70 percent to 35.5 percent. The wealthy, in short, are already paying more than their fair share of taxes, and the growth in their wealth and incomes has had nothing to do with tax avoidance or deflecting the tax burden to the middle class. ~ James Piereson

He was just drifting off to sleep when it occurred to him that perhaps the dog was not so ordinary after all. Perhaps he was someone the ogre had changed, and Ivo was going to spend the night hugging a headmaster or a tax inspector ~ Eva Ibbotson

It is a Constitution that morphs while you look at it like Plasticman ... That is contrary to our whole tradition, to in God we trust on the coins, to Thanksgiving proclamations, to (Congressional) chaplains, to tax exemption for places of worship, which has always existed in America. ~ Antonin Scalia

Now on a personal level with things like the California Tax Commission ... I really think if people started banding together and saying no to this it could snowball and that could really help. ~ Joe Eszterhas

I am not quite sure what the advantage is in having a few more dollars to spend if the air is too dirty to breathe, the water too polluted to drink, the commuters are losing out in the struggle to get in and out of the city, the streets are filthy, and the schools so bad that the young perhaps wisely stay away, and the hoodlums roll citizens for some of the dollars they saved in the tax cut. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

Maybe we should be directing our anger elsewhere - like toward Wall Street. Why is it we never think of Big Business when we think of welfare recipients? Companies take more of our tax dollars, and in much more questionable ways, than do those who are trying to heat their apartments with a kerosene stove. ~ Michael Moore

Look, of course people are scared of entitlement reform because every time you put entitlement reform out there, the other party uses it as a political weapon against you. ~ Paul Ryan

America is a land of taxation that was founded to avoid taxation. ~ Laurence J. Peter

The AMA puts the lives and well being of the American citizens well below it's own special interest ... It deserves to be ignored, rejected, and forgotten. No amount of historical gymnastics can hide the public record of AMA opposition to virtually every major health reform in the past 50 years ... The AMA has turned into a propaganda organ purveying 'medical politics' for deceiving the Congress, the people, and the doctors of America themselves. ~ Edward Kennedy

The Kyoto treaty has failed, and it's failed even in Europe, which has had cap and tax since 2005. ~ Jim Sensenbrenner

Economics should be defined in terms of what it is about. It should be about how people produce things, how people exchange them, how people earn income, how they pay taxes, how the government provides infrastructure with tax revenue, and how it conducts monetary policy. The subject has to be defined in terms of the object of inquiry. ~ Ha-Joon Chang

Lately, he'd been looking at Starbucks baristas and wishing he had their jobs. Tall, grande, latte, cappuccino, skinny, whatever. Not much complexity there. And when you left work at the end of the day you didn't have to think about a fucking thing. Who cared if they made shit for money? At least they wouldn't have to pay much in tax. ~ Paolo Bacigalupi

I was listening," the king said, aggrieved. "I closed my eyes to listen better."
"What did you hear?"
"I'm not sure," he said." That's why I was listening so closely. I may have to ask the baron to repeat some parts of his report on his grain tax."
"I am sure you can arrange an appointment."
"I am sure I can too. ~ Megan Whalen Turner

An income tax form is like a laundry list - either way you lose your shirt. ~ Fred Allen