“I must confess that I had expected the rigorous analysis of income taxation in the utilitarian manner to provide arguments for high tax rates. It has not done so.”

Source: An exploration in the theory of optimum income taxation, 1971, p. 207

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I must confess that I had expected the rigorous analysis of income taxation in the utilitarian manner to provide argume…" by James Mirrlees?
James Mirrlees photo
James Mirrlees 4
Scottish economist 1936–2018

Related quotes

Calvin Coolidge photo
Frank Chodorov photo
R. A. Lafferty photo

“You say it can't be done, but they did it. Their expectations had been too high, and no second-rate Hell could hold them.”

R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) American writer

Source: Space Chantey (1968), Ch. 7
Context: Man-a-bleeding, but they broke out of that place! You say it can't be done, but they did it. Their expectations had been too high, and no second-rate Hell could hold them.
In a way it was their greatest feat. No one else had ever broken out of there before.

Francis Escudero photo
David Lloyd George photo

“All taxation must be a tax upon industry.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1930/apr/16/ways-and-means#column_2939 in the House of Commons (16 April 1930)
Leader of the Liberal Party

Calvin Coolidge photo

“Anybody can reduce taxes, but it is not so easy to stand in the gap and resist the passage of increasing appropriation bills which would make tax reduction impossible. It will be very easy to measure the strength of the attachment to reduced taxation by the power with which increased appropriations are resisted. If at the close of the present session the Congress has kept within the budget which I propose to present, it will then be possible to have a moderate amount of tax reduction and all the tax reform that the Congress may wish for during the next fiscal year. The country is now feeling the direct stimulus which came from the passage of the last revenue bill, and under the assurance of a reasonable system of taxation there is every prospect of an era of prosperity of unprecedented proportions. But it would be idle to expect any such results unless business can continue free from excess profits taxation and be accorded a system of surtaxes at rates which have for their object not the punishment of success or the discouragement of business, but the production of the greatest amount of revenue from large incomes. I am convinced that the larger incomes of the country would actually yield more revenue to the Government if the basis of taxation were scientifically revised downward. Moreover the effect of the present method of this taxation is to increase the cost of interest. on productive enterprise and to increase the burden of rent. It is altogether likely that such reduction would so encourage and stimulate investment that it would firmly establish our country in the economic leadership of the world.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)

Lawrence H. Summers photo

“No free country will ever again have anything like the 90 percent tax rates that we had in this country. Past a certain point, high marginal tax rates are, indeed, terribly destructive.”

Lawrence H. Summers (1954) Former US Secretary of the Treasury

David Wessel, The Wall Street Journal (April 5, 1998) "Rich now pay more in taxes", Mobile Register, p. F1.
1990s

Hugh Gaitskell photo

“You can be assured of this. There will be no increase in the standard or other rates of income tax under the Labour Government so long as normal peacetime conditions continue.”

Hugh Gaitskell (1906–1963) British politician

Speech in Newcastle (28 September 1959) during the general election campaign, quoted in The Times (29 September 1959), p. 10
Leader of the Labour Party

Nigel Lawson photo
Franklin D. Roosevelt photo

Related topics