Fairness dictates that people should keep the fruits of their labor, period. Government doesn’t deserve any share of your income, property, or wealth, and thus should not determine its budget based on how much money it can confiscate.
Communications Director, Club For Growth, Mike Connolly
government should determine what it must do and go about collecting the necessary taxes to do it
For many people, if they’re taxed at a higher rate when they make more money, it makes sense not to work as hard, or to be as creative or to show as much initiative, because they’re not going to be rewarded for it. If earning more money will only push a person into a higher tax bracket where they end up paying more, in effect, they’re actually working for somebody else, in this case, the federal government.
Author, Commentator and President of The King's College, Dinesh D'Souza
[The wealthy]provide capital for new investments, new inventions and new products ... the first computers cost a lot of money, likewise the first cell phones. The wealthy at the time bought the computers for $7,000 and the cell phones for $2,500, which subsidized the research that then allowed Apple and other companies to now sell the cell phone for $49.95. So the prices of things come down ... because the rich are the initial purchasers, and that money then goes towards making this new technology more widely available and cheaper.
[A] function of the wealthy in an economy is that they are the people who hire the rest of us, so that most people who have a job are being employed by a wealthy guy or a wealthy group of guys under the name of a corporation.
if ... $54 billion were to be taken away [from Bill Gates], who would be better to spend it? 535 guys in congress who didn’t do anything to earn that money, or Bill Gates himself? Who is more likely to be careful in spending the money and making sure that if it’s going to used philanthropically that it does a lot of good?
The purpose of taxation is to fund the activities of government, so defining the proper role of government will naturally determine the amount of money required to fund these activities and the kind of tax system necessary to generate it.
President of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, Star Parker
Because government is run by people, money creates power and power tends to corrupt, the government’s ability to tax should be limited and the tax system impartial, something like a flat rate income or sales tax. The more power that the government wields, the more corruptible and corrupt it becomes, communism and socialism being the obvious examples. So the problem with a progressive tax system is that the government becomes a tool of social engineering by rewarding groups and behaviors which it favors with tax breaks and subsidies and punishing those it disfavors
The wealthy don’t simply horde their money, or bury it in the ground, they invest it in such a way that all of society benefits, by producing products and services that people want which then creates jobs which people need.
confiscating a person’s wealth is a violation of his or her right to be responsible for their own money. For he who has much, much is required.
The absolute worst type of tax is an income tax because, in effect, it's a tax on people for working, producing and investing, based not on what they take out of an economy, but what they put into it.
Economist, investment advisor, author and commentator, Peter Schiff
because an income tax makes no distinction between, for example, income used to buy luxury goods and income saved and invested in starting or growing a business, it naturally reduces the amount of money which is available to be invested.
An economy suffers when money is taken from a rich person and sent to the government because this is the very money that the rich would have otherwise used to fund the growth of their own or other people's businesses which in turn creates jobs for a population.
All of the available evidence shows ... that private individuals and businesses are far more effective at creating businesses and jobs with their own money than government is.
if the federal government were a size that it should be ... we wouldn't even be discussing which kind of tax system we would need because it could probably be conducted on user fees alone. But that's not the country we live in and if I had to pick, I'd favor taxing consumption rather than the income tax which penalizes savings and investment. It's inevitable, though, that they would all end up looking like the mess we have now because politicians like to use the tax code to spend money and to engineer certain outcomes. At the end of the day it's more important to reduce the size of government at which point how you tax becomes increasingly less important. If the money's there, they're going to spend it.
Writer and Cato Institute Budget Analyst, Tad DeHaven
A single rate tax, either an income tax or a sales tax means that every single American has the same relationship with their government. Graduated or progressive income taxes allow the government to divide Americans into different groups and mug them one at a time.
President of Americans For Tax Reform, Grover Norquist
Unfortunately, the most efficient taxes are often the most inequitable so governments must seek a compromise. They must also consider the ease of avoidance of taxes and the costs of collecting them. With the rise in importance of adverse environmental effects of human activity there are increasing opportunities for taxes which unequivocally increase well-being because they both raise revenue for government and, at the same time, discourage environmental damage. A good example would be a tax on carbon emissions.
Professor & Head of QUT's School of Economics and Finance, Tim Robinson
Income taxes and taxes on investment ... discourage the very behavior -- work and savings -- that are essential to a growing, dynamic economy.
Independent Women's Forum director and Goldwater Institute senior fellow, Carrie Lukas
When the rich have less money to spend and invest, that means fewer customers and less capital for businesses, and fewer jobs for the rest of us.
The truth is that if you talk simply in terms of effectiveness, the most effective thing is to not tax the upper end of the income bracket very much at all because those people are the ones actually earning money, producing products, providing services and hiring people.
Syndicated columnist and author, Ben Shapiro
A flat tax is the best balance between equity and efficiency. I think it's perfectly equitable because by nature percentages are perfectly equitable - it's not a flat sum, it's a flat rate. If someone has a smaller pie, a smaller piece will be taken out of the pie.
In terms of efficiency, a national sales tax is probably slightly more efficient, because it allows consumers to buy products based on their actual needs and desires, and to decide for themselves how much they want to be taxed. If they don't want to be taxed very much, they don't have to buy luxury items.
The wealthy in this country are by and large the job creators. Tax them, and they will cut jobs because it impedes their ability to create.
The problem with [a flate rate consumption tax] ... is that it leads to making government look less costly and so the historical experience, particularly in Europe, is that the absolute size of government is very much a function of what their flat rate is and I think if we move toward a flat rate consumption tax (VAT) that we would need to have an independent process to approve an increase in the size of government that requires a larger approval, maybe two thirds of the vote in Congress or approval by number of states.
Cato Institute Chairman Emeritus and Senior Economist, William Niskanen
“High taxes on the wealthy” is a political public relations talking point. In reality taxes that are raised on the “so-called rich” hurt a wide range of small business owners, and stifle job creation.
Vice President of the National Taxpayers Union, Pete Sepp
The simpler the tax system is, the better, otherwise it quickly become a vehicle for social engineering or other schemes (through the use of things like tax deductions and tax credits), rather than simply a way to raise revenues for the government.
Contributing editor of City Journal and Manhattan Institute senior fellow, Steven Malanga
At some point, if taxes become too high, they become a disincentive for people to do additional work, because the additional value that is earned from that work is diminished.
There is little or no evidence that high taxes on the wealthy--if high is defined as under 40 percent top rate--do anything to harm entrepreneurship or wealth creation.
Author, commentator and lead Bloomberg View columnist, Jonathan Alter
