“The income tax is a much less effective tool for reducing inequalities than has often been thought.”

— James Mirrlees

Source: An exploration in the theory of optimum income taxation, 1971, p. 208

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James Mirrlees 4

Scottish economist 1936–2018

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“An income tax intended to reduce inequality and promote the diffusion of wealth has in practice fostered reinvestment of corporate earnings, thereby favoring the growth of large corporations, inhibiting the operation of the capital market, and discouraging the establishment of new enterprises.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

Source: (1962), Ch. 13 Conclusion, 2002 edition, p. 198

“I do want to reduce the income tax and if possible, eliminate the income tax…The first thing you do is balance the budget, then reduce the size of government.”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

2000s

“The more ideas have become automatic, instrumentalized, the less does anybody see in them thoughts with a meaning of their own. They are considered things, machines. Language has been reduced to just another tool in the gigantic apparatus of production in modern society.”

Max Horkheimer book Eclipse of Reason

Source: Eclipse of Reason (1947), pp. 21-22.

“The final and best means of strengthening demand among consumers and business is to reduce the burden on private income and the deterrents to private initiative which are imposed by our present tax system; and this administration pledged itself last summer to an across-the-board, top-to-bottom cut in personal and corporate income taxes to be enacted and become effective in 1963.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1962, Address and Question and Answer Period at the Economic Club of New York

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

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

"Helping the Girls with their Income Taxes" 
The Illiterate Digest (1924)
Context: The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. Even when you make one out on the level, you don't know when it's through if you are a Crook or a Martyr.

“Both in England and on the Continent a graduated property tax (l'impôt progressif) has been advocated, on the avowed ground that the state should use the instrument of taxation as a means of mitigating the inequalities of wealth. I am as desirous as any one that means should be taken to diminish those inequalities, but not so as to relieve the prodigal at the expense of the prudent.To tax the larger incomes at a higher percentage than the smaller is to lay a tax on industry and economy; to impose a penalty on people for having worked harder and saved more than their neighbours. It is not the fortunes which are earned, but those which are unearned, that it is for the public good to place under limitation.”

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) British philosopher and political economist

Principles of Political Economy http://www.econlib.org/library/Mill/mlP64.html (1848), Book V, Chapter II

“Questions about the influence of socialism are increasingly more difficult to answer as the word socialism has so many meanings. The idea that the inequalities of incomes can be greatly reduced has come to be recognized as largely impractical. Practically all endeavours at just distribution express more or less arbitrary conceptions of what is just and the central idea of Marxian socialism of a rationalisation of the means of production has been largely abandoned as technically impracticable. I believe that in general the idea of justice is more closely met by a freely competitive market than by any deliberate allocation of income to some imagined ideal of the kind.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

December 13, 1991, quoted in Friedrich Hayek: A Biography (2001) by Alan O. Ebenstein
1980s and later

“One of the most significant results of the industrial struggle during the past fifty years has been the creation of a condition of a vast inequality of wealth and income.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

"The Commercial Motive" ibid.
Context: One of the most significant results of the industrial struggle during the past fifty years has been the creation of a condition of a vast inequality of wealth and income. This inequality is so extreme that it now constitutes one of the chief sources of bitterness and strife in modern life.... not that the poor have been getting poorer but that the number and sizes of great fortunes have increased enormously.

“With the enactment of the Income Tax Law of 1913, the Federal Government began to apply effectively the widely accepted principle that taxes should be levied in proportion to ability to pay and in proportion to the benefits received. Income was wisely chosen as the measure of benefits and of ability to pay. This was, and still is, a wholesome guide for national policy. It should be retained as the governing principle of Federal taxation. The use of other forms of taxes is often justifiable, particularly for temporary periods; but taxation according to income is the most effective instrument yet devised to obtain just contribution from those best able to bear it and to avoid placing onerous burdens upon the mass of our people.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

1930s, Message to Congress on tax revision (1935)

“At a time of massive wealth and income inequality, when the three richest Americans own more wealth than 160 million Americans, it is literally beyond belief that the Republican leadership wants to provide hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks to the top 0.2 percent…”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Bernie Sanders Has a Plan to Tax the Rich That’s About As Radical as What Teddy Roosevelt Proposed, by John Nichols, The Nation https://www.thenation.com/article/bernie-sanders-progressive-estate-tax-teddy-roosevelt/ (12 February 2019)
2010s, 2019, February 2019

“The income tax is a much less effective tool for reducing inequalities than has often been thought.”

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