“Taxation is just a sophisticated way of demanding money with menaces.”

— Terry Pratchett , book Night Watch

Source: Night Watch

Last update Sept. 29, 2023. History

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Terry Pratchett 796

English author 1948–2015

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“Income taxation appeals to the governing class because in its everlasting urgency for power it needs money. Income taxation appeals to the mass of people because it gives expression to their envy; it salves their sense of hurt. The only beneficiaries of income taxation are the politicians, for it not only gives them the means by which they can increase their emoluments but it also enables them to improve their importance. The have-nots who support the politicians in the demand for income taxation do so only because they hate the haves; although they delude themselves with the thought that they might get some of the pelt the fact is that the taxing of incomes cannot in any way improve their economic condition. So that, the sum of all the arguments for income taxation comes to political ambition and the sin of covetousness.”

Frank Chodorov (1887–1966) American libertarian thinker

Source: The Income Tax: Root of All Evil (1954), p. 27

“We want two things. We want relief from the pressure of excessive taxation, and at the same time we want money to meet our own domestic needs at home, which have been too long starved and neglected owing to the demands on the taxpayer for military purposes abroad.”

Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1836–1908) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in the Albert Hall, London (21 December 1905), quoted in The Times (22 December 1905), p. 7
Prime Minister

“The physical power to get the money does not seem to me a test of the right to tax. Might does not make right even in taxation.”

Robert H. Jackson (1892–1954) American judge

International Harvester Co. v. Wisconsin Dept. of Taxation, 322 U.S. 435, 450 (1944)
Judicial opinions
Context: The physical power to get the money does not seem to me a test of the right to tax. Might does not make right even in taxation. To hold that what the use of official authority may get the state may keep, and that if it cannot get hold of a nonresident stockholder it may hold the company as hostage for him, is strange constitutional doctrine to me.

“The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them down between the millstones of taxation and inflation.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

John Maynard Keynes, paraphrase of Lenin Interview http://blog.skepticallibertarian.com/2013/04/15/fake-quote-files-v-i-lenin-on-inflation-and-taxation/
Misattributed

“I say money has no value; it's just the way you spend it.”

William Faulkner book The Sound and the Fury

Source: The Sound and the Fury

“It is time to change the political discourse on globalization: trade is a good thing, but fair and sustainable development also demands public services, infrastructure, health and education systems. In turn, these themselves demand fair taxation systems. If we fail to deliver these, Trumpism will prevail.”

Thomas Piketty (1971) French economist

We must rethink globalization, or Trumpism will prevail (16 November 2016)

“Inflation is an increase in the quantity of money without a corresponding increase in the demand for money, i. e., for cash holdings.”

Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973) austrian economist

The Free Market and Its Enemies, speech to the Foundation for Economic Education https://fee.org/library/books/the-free-market-and-its-enemies/ (1951)