# Taxation in the United States

The United States of America has separate federal, state, and local governments with taxes imposed at each of these levels. Taxes are levied on income, payroll, property, sales, capital gains, dividends, imports, estates and gifts.

## Quotes
### B

* There's a mystic quality about our tax system. No matter how bad it may be from the technical standpoint, it has a vitality because of the very high level of compliance.
** Mortimer Caplin, former Commissioner of Internal Revenue, in Business Adventures by John Brooks, originally published in The New Yorker.

### C

* I suspect a complex society requires a complex tax law.
** Sheldon S. Cohen, IRS commissioner at the time Brooks wrote his article, on why he believed prospects for simplifying the tax code were minimal.

### E

* Well, I would say the biggest factor is confusion between the sort of truly free IRS-sponsored option and then a bunch of commercial options that are advertised as free but are not always free. So it becomes very confusing very quickly.
** Justin Elliott, "How you can file your taxes online for free", NPR, (March 19, 2022)
* Black people should refuse to pay any taxes to the racist government, including federal income, estate and sates taxes, while being subjected to exploitation and brutality. The rich and their corporations pay virtually no taxes; it is the poor and workers who bear the brunt of taxation. Yet they receive nothing in return. There are still huge unemployment levels in the Black community, the unemployment and welfare benefits are paltry; the schools are dilapidated; public housing is a disgrace, while rents by absentee landlord properties are exorbitant — all these conditions and more are supposedly corrected by government taxation of income, goods, and services. Wrong! It goes to the Pentagon, defense contractors, and greedy consultants, who like vultures prey on business with the government.
** Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin, Anarchism and the Black Revolution (1993)

### F

* TurboTax is only free for some users, based on the tax forms they need. For many others, Intuit tells them, after they have invested time and effort gathering and inputting into TurboTax their sensitive personal and financial information to prepare their tax returns, that they cannot continue for free; they will need to upgrade to a paid TurboTax service to complete and file their taxes
** FTC FTC Sues to Stop “Deceptive" TurboTax "Free" Ad Campaign (March 29, 2022)

### G

* Well, that’s the ordinary income. These great fortunes were not made through ordinary incomes. So you probably have to look to the capital gains rate and the estate tax if you want to, you know, create more equity there.
** Bill Gates, responding to Stephen Colbert's question about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's proposal of a 70% marginal tax rate, February 13, 2019

### I

* For lots of folks, the tax cuts are lost in a sea of other deduction changes, which also happen January 1
    Since personal exemptions were repealed, any allowances [you take] should roughly reflect expectations as to itemized deductions or tax credits to which you are entitled
   * Pete Isberg, "Here's how much paychecks may go up this month under new tax law", CNN, (February 1, 2018)

### J

* No is the answer. I think it’s absolutely outrageous. Why should I? [pay US tax]
    I think, you know, I’m not a … I, you know, I haven’t lived in the United States for, you know, well, since I was five years old … I pay the lion’s share of my tax, I pay my taxes to the full in the United Kingdom where I live and work.
    It’s very difficult to give up [American passport].
   * Boris Johnson "London mayor Boris Johnson reported to have paid US tax demand", The Guardian, (2015)

### K

* And to all those overburdened by an unfair tax structure, let us provide new hope for real tax reform. Instead of shutting down classrooms, let us shut off tax shelters. Instead of cutting out school lunches, let us cut off tax subsidies for expensive business lunches that are nothing more than food stamps for the rich. The tax cut of our Republican opponents takes the name of tax reform in vain. It is a wonderfully Republican idea that would redistribute income in the wrong direction. It's good news for any of you with incomes over 200,000 dollars a year. For the few of you, it offers a pot of gold worth 14,000 dollars. But the Republican tax cut is bad news for the middle income families. For the many of you, they plan a pittance of 200 dollars a year, and that is not what the Democratic Party means when we say tax reform. The vast majority of Americans cannot afford this panacea from a Republican nominee who has denounced the progressive income tax as the invention of Karl Marx. I am afraid he has confused Karl Marx with Theodore Roosevelt -- that obscure Republican president who sought and fought for a tax system based on ability to pay. Theodore Roosevelt was not Karl Marx, and the Republican tax scheme is not tax reform.
** Ted Kennedy, "And the Dream Shall Never Die," 12 August 1980

### L

* No taxation without representation.
** "No taxation without representation", London Magazine, February 1768; Lord Camden's "Speech on the Declaratory Bill of the Sovereignty of Great Britain over the Colonies.

### M

* The tax refund is often the biggest windfall households receive all year
    Households that have experienced income disruption during the pandemic are very likely to need to rebuild their emergency savings
   * Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate.com, Here’s the average tax refund so far this year — and the 3 best places to stash yours (MAR 24 2022)
* ... in terms of business mistakes that I've seen over a long lifetime, I would say that trying to minimize taxes too much is one of the great standard causes of really dumb mistakes. I see terrible mistakes from people being overly motivated by tax considerations. Warren and I personally don't drill oil wells. We pay our taxes. And we've done pretty well, so far. Anytime somebody offers you a tax shelter from here on in life, my advice would be don't buy it. In fact, any time anybody offers you anything with a big commission and a 200-page prospectus, don't buy it. Occasionally, you'll be wrong if you adopt "Munger's Rule". However, over a lifetime, you'll be a long way ahead — and you will miss a lot of unhappy experiences that might otherwise reduce your love for your fellow man.
** Charlie Munger, A Lesson on Elementary, Worldly Wisdom As It Relates To Investment Management & Business. Speech at USC Business School (1994). (p. 22 of 24)

### R

* The line has been used, "We’ve never had it so good". But I have an uncomfortable feeling that this prosperity isn’t something on which we can base our hopes for the future. No nation in history has ever survived a tax burden that reached a third of its national income. Today, 37 cents out of every dollar earned in this country is the tax collector’s share, and yet our government continues to spend $17 million dollars a day more than the government takes in. We haven’t balanced our budget 28 out of the last 34 years. We’ve raised our debt limit three times in the last twelve months, and now our national debt is one and a half times bigger than all the combined debts of all the nations in the world. We have $15 billion in gold in our treasury—we don’t own an ounce. Foreign dollar claims are $27.3 billion, and we have just had announced that the dollar of 1939 will now purchase 45 cents in its total value.
** Ronald Reagan, "A Time for Choosing" (1964)

### S

* Today’s tax code contains two sets of rules: one for regular wage and salary workers who report virtually all the income they earn; and another for wealthy taxpayers, who are often able to avoid a large share of the taxes they owe.
** Natasha Sarin, "Biden plan would give IRS more power to track $600 bank accounts: What you need to know", Azcentral.com, (October 9, 2021)

### W

* Let's talk about President-elect Trump's other big priorities. Taxes. He's promised a lot of tax cuts. We have a list of some of them here. Let's take a look. Extending the 2017 tax cuts, further slashing the corporate rate, lifting the cap on deductions for state and local taxes, eliminating taxes on tips, overtime and social security benefits and so on; the estimated price of this to the tune of $9 trillion. Do you believe that President-elect Trump will be able to deliver on all of those tax cuts, Senator?
** Kristen Welker according to Meet the Press – November 10, 2024 (Nov. 10, 2024)

## See also

* Economy of the United States
* Taxation
* Inheritance tax
* Tax noncompliance
* Taxation in India