“Over and over again courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging one's affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everybody does so, rich or poor; and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands: taxes are enforced exactions, not voluntary contributions. To demand more in the name of morals is mere cant.”

— Learned Hand

Commissioner v. Newman https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=6284821606579578514, 159 F2d 848 (1947).
Judicial opinions

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Learned Hand 56

American legal scholar, Court of Appeals judge 1872–1961

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“Any one may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which will best pay the Treasury; there is not even a patriotic duty to increase one's taxes.”

Learned Hand (1872–1961) American legal scholar, Court of Appeals judge

Helvering v. Gregory http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/69/809/1562063/, 69 F.2d 809, 810-11 (2d Cir. 1934).
Judicial opinions

“I know of no duty of the Court which it is more important to observe, and no powers of the Court which it is more important to enforce, than its power of keeping public bodies within their rights. The moment public bodies exceed their rights] they do so to the injury and oppression of private individuals, and those persons are entitled to be protected from injury arising from such operations of public bodies.”

Nathaniel Lindley, Baron Lindley (1828–1921) English judge

Roberts v. Gwyrfai District Council (1899), L. R. 2 C. D. 614.

“HALF of America pays NO taxes. Zero. So they’re happy for tax rates to be raised on the other half that DOES pay any taxes.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

Twitter tweet (25 July 2011), as quoted in David Atkins at Hullabaloo (26 July 2011) http://www.drumsnwhistles.com/2011/07/26/rick-warren-what-were-you-thinking/

“…for nothing can be more reasonable, than that slaves and flatterers should exact the same taxes on all below them, which they themselves pay to all above them.”

Henry Fielding (1707–1754) English novelist and dramatist

Book I, Chapter 6
The History of Tom Jones (1749)

“The State oppresses and the law cheats.
Tax bleeds the unfortunate.
No duty is imposed on the rich;
The rights of the poor is an empty phrase.
Enough languishing in custody!
Equality wants other laws:
No rights without duties, she says,
Equally, no duties without rights.”

Eugène Edine Pottier (1816–1887) French politician

L'État comprime et la loi triche
L'impôt saigne le malheureux
Nul devoir ne s'impose au riche
Le droit du pauvre est un mot creux
C'est assez, languir en tutelle
L'égalité veut d'autres lois
Pas de droits sans devoirs dit-elle
Égaux, pas de devoirs sans droits
The Internationale (1864)

“There was that law of life so cruel and so just which demanded that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.”

Norman Mailer book Barbary Shore

Source: Barbary Shore (1951), Ch. 26

“"The poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he…" [Colonel Thomas Rainsborough, Putney Debates 1647] This is one Liberal Text. And it is more distinctive than may at first appear. It asserts the individual and the value of any individual - even the poorest He. But it asserts it without envy. It does not demand that the rich be made poor - nor even claim that the poor are more deserving than the rich. It demands equality in one thing only, the right to live one's own life.”

Jo Grimond (1913–1993) British soldier, politician and academic

The Liberal Future (London: Faber and Faber, 1959), p. 12.

““Am I hired?”
“There is no legal way you can get me out of paying that much of my taxes.”
“On the contrary, Mr. Wiggin. The tax laws are designed to trick people into paying more than they have to. That way the rich who are in the know get to take advantage of drastic tax breaks, while those who don’t have such good connections and haven’t yet found an accountant who does are tricked into paying ludicrously higher amounts.””

Orson Scott Card Ender's Game hexalogy

Page 188
Ender's Game series, First Meetings in the Enderverse (2003), Investment Counselor

“We had to make certain that violence and intimidation and impossible demands could not win. There would have been neither freedom not order in Britain if we had given in to violence. There would have been no hope for any prosperous industry if people had gone on strike, really, for bigger and bigger subsidies from the tax-payers, because in the end it is the tax-payers who pay these subsidies. So that is over.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Remarks on the end of the miners' strike (3 March 1985) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/105982
Second term as Prime Minister

“That is a widespread myth, that it is possible to spend money with nobody paying for it. You have everybody screaming that we ought to have new, bigger, more generous government programs. Where are we going to raise the money? Tax business. But business corporations can’t pay any taxes. A corporate executive may sign the check, but where does he get the money? From his stockholders or from his customers or from his employees. Unlike the federal government, he doesn’t have a printing press in his basement. So the only way he can pay money to the government is imposing a burden on somebody. Government cannot spend money at nobody’s expense.”

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

“Economic Myths and Public Opinion” https://miltonfriedman.hoover.org/friedman_images/Collections/2016c21/AmSpectator_01_1976.pdf, The Alternative: An American Spectator, vol. 9, no. 4, (January 1976) pp. 5-9

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Learned Hand 56

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