I prefer an income tax, but the truth is I am afraid of the discussion which will follow and the criticism which will ensue if the...re is an other division in the Supreme Court on the subject of the income tax. Nothing has injured the prestige of the Supreme Court more than that last decision, and I think that many of the most violent advocates of the income tax will be glad of the substitution in their hearts for the same reasons. I am going to push the Constitutional amendment, which will admit an income tax without questions, but I am afraid of it without such an amendment.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The decision of the Supreme Court in the income taxes cases deprived the National Government of a power which, by reasons of previ...ous decisions of the court, it was generally supposed that Government had. It is undoubtedly a power the National Government ought to have.... I therefore recommend to the Congress that both Houses, by a two-thirds vote, shall propose an amendment to the Constitution conferring the power to levy an income tax upon the National Government without apportionment among the States in proportion to population ... and second, the enactment, as part of the pending revenue measure, either as a substitute for, or in addition to, the inheritance tax, an excise tax upon all corporations, measured by 2 percent of their net income.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There are certain things--as, a spider, a ghost, The income-tax, gout, an umbrella for three--... That I hate, but the thing that I hate the most Is a thing they call the Sea.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I wouldn't wish the eighties on anyone, it was the time when all that was rotten bubbled to the surface. If you were not at the re...ceiving end of this mayhem you could be unaware of it. It was possible to live through the decade preoccupied by the mortgage and the pence you saved on your income tax. It was also possible for those of us who saw what was happening to turn our eyes in a different direction; but what, in another decade, had been a trip to the clap clinic was now a trip to the mortuary.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
He is a man of thirty-five, but looks fifty. He is bald, has varicose veins and wears spectacles, or would wear them if his only p...air were not chronically lost. If things are normal with him, he will be suffering from malnutrition, but if he has recently had a lucky streak, he will be suffering from a hangover. At present it is half past eleven in the morning, and according to his schedule he should have started work two hours ago; but even if he had made any serious effort to start he would have been frustrated by the almost continuous ringing of the telephone bell, the yells of the baby, the rattle of an electric drill out in the street, and the heavy boots of his creditors clumping up the stairs. The most recent interruption was the arrival of the second post, which brought him two circulars and an income tax demand printed in red. Needless to say this person is a writer.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
New Hampshire has always been cheap, mean, rural, small-minded, and reactionary. It's one of the few states in the nation with nei...ther a sales tax nor an income tax. Social services are totally inadequate there, it ranks at the bottom in state aid to education--the state is literally shaped like a dunce cap--and its medical assistance program is virtually nonexistent. Expecting aid for the poor there is like looking for an egg under a basilisk.... The state encourages skinflints, cheapskates, shutwallets, and pinched little joykillers who move there as a tax refuge to save money.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I regard the state of which I am a citizen as a public utility, like the organization that supplies me with water, gas, and electr...icity. I feel that it is my civic duty to pay my taxes as well as my other bills, and that it is my moral duty to make an honest declaration of my income to the income tax authorities. But I do not feel that I and my fellow citizens have a religious duty to sacrifice our lives in war on behalf of our own state, and, a fortiori, I do not feel that we have an obligation or a right to kill and maim citizens of other states or to devastate their land.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The last time we used battleships was in the Spanish-American War. And what did we get out of that? Cuba. And we gave that back.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What I am anxious to do is to get the best bill possible with the least amount of friction.... I wish to avoid [splitting our part...y]. I shall do all in my power to retain the corporation tax as it is now and also force a reduction of the [tariff] schedules. It is only when all other efforts fail that I'll resort to headlines and force the people into this fight.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »