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

When it comes to taxes, everyone has an opinion. These quotes reflect the opinions of their authors; their inclusion here is not an official IRS endorsement of the sentiments expressed.

When there’s a single thief, it’s robbery. When there are a thousand thieves, it’s taxation.
Vanya Cohen

“Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.”

Taxation with representation ain’t so hot either.
Gerald Barzan

“The power of taxing people and their property is essential to the very existence of government.”

Taxes, after all, are dues that we pay for the privileges of membership in an organized society.
Franklin D. Roosevelt

“To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.”

The taxpayer – that’s someone who works for the federal government but doesn’t have to take the civil service examination.
Ronald Reagan

�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.�

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

�People who complain about taxes can be divided into two classes: men and women.�

I’m proud to pay taxes in the United States; the only thing is, I could be just as proud for half the money.
Arthur Godfrey

“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.”

The United States has a system of taxation by confession.
Hugo Black

“Like mothers, taxes are often misunderstood, but seldom forgotten.”

Why does a slight tax increase cost you two hundred dollars and a substantial tax cut save you thirty cents?
Peg Bracken

“The best measure of a man’s honesty isn’t his income tax return. It’s the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.”

The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. 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

“Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as satisfying as an income tax refund.�

Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.
H.L. Mencken

A tax loophole is “something that benefits the other guy. If it benefits you, it is tax reform.”

The nation should have a tax system that looks like someone designed it on purpose.
William Simon

“Few of us ever test our powers of deduction, except when filling out an income tax form.”

We must care for each other more, and tax each other less.
Bill Archer

�The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.�

The expenses of government, having for their object the interest of all, should be borne by everyone, and the more a man enjoys the advantages of society, the more he ought to hold himself honored in contributing to those expenses.
Anne Robert Jacques Turgot

�Taxation with representation ain�t so hot either.�

Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors… and miss.
Robert Heinlein

�Where there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.�

The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to get the most feathers with the least hissing.
Jean Baptist Colbert

�Income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf.�

What at first was plunder assumed the softer name of revenue.
Thomas Paine

A balanced program for tax reform based upon the common sense idea of lowering taxes out of surplus revenues.

Did you ever notice that when you put the words “The” and “IRS” together, it spells “THEIRS?”

A great deal has been said about my commitment not to raise taxes. It’s a core value – it’s common sense – it’s important to keeping and growing jobs – and it’s mainstream!

We have long had death and taxes as the two standards of inevitability. But there are those who believe that death is the preferable of the two. “At least,” as one man said, “there’s one advantage about death; it doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.”
Erwin N. Griswold

A Harris poll I’ve seen says only 12 percent of the electorate names taxes as one of the most important issues facing the nation. Voters put tax cuts dead last, behind education, Social Security, health care, Medicare and poverty.

Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today.
Herman Wouk

A variety of factors contribute to the price of gasoline in the United States. These factors include worldwide supply, demand and competition for crude oil
, taxes, regional differences in access to gasoline supplies and environmental regulations.

Capital punishment: The income tax.
Jeff Hayes

After 20 years in Congress, I still believe that smaller government and lower taxes are the most effective economic policies.

If the Lord loveth a cheerful giver, how he must hate the taxpayer!
John Andrew Holmes

Americans spend much of their adult lives paying taxes in various forms. We should end this practice of paying a tax that is triggered only by debt

And a special thank you to the citizens of Massachusetts: You are paying all the taxes, creating all the jobs, raising all the children. This government is yours. Thank you for letting me serve you. I love this job.

People who complain about taxes can be divided into two classes: men and women.

And here a most heinous charge is made, that the nation has been burdened with unnecessary expenses for the sole purpose of preventing the discharge of our debts and the abolition of taxes.

Taxes: Of life’s two certainties, the only one for which you can get an automatic extension.

And that does concern me, because we’re not getting enough back for our taxes that we’re paying. I think we really have to look at the whole sort of area.

Indoors or out, no one relaxes in March, that month of wind and taxes, the wind will presently disappear, the taxes last us all the year.
Ogden Nash

April is tax month. If you are having trouble filing your taxes, then you should hire an accountant. They’ll give you the same advice that they’ve given hundreds of corporations – taxes are for douche bags.

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

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.

Man is not like other animals in the ways that are really significant: animals have instincts, we have taxes.
Erving Goffman

As I said in my state of the state address, we can no longer rely on gaming and sales taxes to pay our way. Indian gaming next door in California is eroding our major industry in Nevada.

The purse of the people is the real seat of sensibility. Let it be drawn upon largely, and they will then listen to truths which could not excite them through any other organ.
Thomas Jefferson

As I’ve often said, Wisconsin’s greatest strength continues to be the dedicated, hardworking people of our state. They go to work everyday, pay their taxes, and raise their kids with good, Midwestern values.

To force a man to pay for the violation of his own liberty is indeed an addition of insult to injury. Benjamin Tucker

Benjamin Franklin said there were only two things certain in life: death and taxes. But I’d like to add a third certainty: trash. And while some in this room might want to discuss reducing taxes, I want to talk about reducing trash.

Today, it takes more brains and effort to make out the income-tax form than it does to make the income.
Alfred E. Neuman

Big business never pays a nickel in taxes, according to Ralph Nader, who represents a big consumer organization that never pays a nickel in taxes.

A person doesn’t know how much he has to be thankful for until he has to pay taxes on it.

But the point you need to know is that no president at war cut taxes $1.5 trillion, like Bush did.

Taxes are paid in the sweat of every man who labors.
Franklin D. Roosevelt

By requiring that any surplus in Social Security taxes be returned to the American people in personal savings accounts, the plan ensures that Social Security taxes will be used for Social Security.

I am thankful for the taxes I pay because it means that I’m employed.
Nancie J. Carmody

Certainty? In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.

The point to remember is that what the government gives it must first take away.
John S. Coleman

Coal research and development provides huge benefits for the nation, and pay for itself many times over through taxes flowing back to the Treasury from expanded economic activity.

Philosophy teaches a man that he can’t take it with him; taxes teach him he can’t leave it behind either.
Mignon McLaughlin

It was as true… as taxes is. And nothing’s truer than them.
Charles Dickens

Death and taxes may be inevitable, but they shouldn’t be related.
J.C. Watts, Jr.

The best things in life are free, but sooner or later the government will find a way to tax them.

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.
Ronald Reagan

I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

I shall never use profanity except in discussing house rent and taxes.
Mark Twain

Our tax code is so long it makes War and Peace seem breezy.
Steven LaTourette

The wages of sin are death, but after they take the taxes out, it’s more like a tired feeling, really. Paula Poundstone

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.
John Sherman

You must pay taxes. But there’s no law that says you gotta leave a tip.
Morgan Stanley advertisement

If, from the more wretched parts of the old world, we look at those which are in an advanced stage of improvement, we still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry, and grasping the spoil of the multitude. 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.
Thomas Paine

Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as satisfying as an income tax refund.
F.J. Raymond

There’s nothing wrong with the younger generation that becoming taxpayers won’t cure.
Dan Bennett

Pothinus: “Is it possible that Caesar, the conqueror of the world, has time to occupy himself with such a trifle as our taxes?”

Caesar: “My friend, taxes are the chief business of a conqueror of the world.”
George Bernard Shaw

There may be liberty and justice for all, but there are tax breaks only for some.
Martin A. Sullivan

The income tax created more criminals than any other single act of government.
Barry Goldwater

Taxes grow without rain.
Jewish Proverb

I don’t know if I can live on my income or not – the government won’t let me try it.
Bob Thaves

Of all debts, men are least willing to pay their taxes; what a satire this is on government.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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.
Benjamin Franklin

Any tax is a discouragement and therefore a regulation so far as it goes.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Question: ” I understand that Congress is considering a so-called ‘flat’ tax system. How would this work?” Answer: “If Congress were to pass a ‘flat’ tax, you’d simply pay a fixed percentage of your income, and you wouldn’t have to fill out any complicated forms, and there would be no loopholes for politically connected groups, and normal people would actually understand the tax laws, and giant talking broccoli stalks would come around and mow your lawn for free, because Congress is NOT going to pass a flat tax, you pathetic fool.”
Dave Barry

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.
Steve Forbes

A fine is a tax for doing something wrong. A tax is a fine for doing something right. Author Unknown

Count the day won when, turning on its axis,
This earth imposes no additional taxes.
Franklin P. Adams

Taxation, for example, is eternally lively; it concerns nine-tenths of us more directly than either smallpox or golf, and has just as much drama in it; moreover, it has been mellowed and made gay by as many gaudy, preposterous theories.
H.L. Mencken

Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery.
Calvin Coolidge

It’s about ten times the size of the Bible – and unlike the Bible, contains no good news.
Don Nickles

The payment of taxes gives a right to protection.
James M. Wayne

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.
Leon Panetta

What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin.
Mark Twain

The sales tax seems to be more politically acceptable than the income tax.
Raymond C. Scheppach

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.
Martin D. Ginsburg

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.
Walter B. Wriston

The politicians say “we” can’t afford a tax cut. Maybe we can’t afford the politicians.
Steve Forbes

The more you earn, the less you keep,
And now I lay me down to sleep.
I pray the Lord my soul to take,
If the tax-collector hasn’t got it before I wake.
Ogden Nash

Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a refund from the IRS, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.

You don’t pay taxes – they take taxes.
Chris Rock

People try to live within their income so they can afford to pay taxes to a government that can’t live within its income.
Robert Half

Tax complexity itself is a kind of tax.
Max Baucus

There is a direct link between the federal tax cut of 2001 and state tax increases in 2003. When the federal government’s mistakes force states to raise their taxes, it not only robs Peter to pay Paul, but it hurts hard-working families and it undermines our economy’s strength.

I can give you 1040 good reasons why I hate the government.