It has been said that the welfare state must collapse because it is too expensive; that government-funded healthcare must collapse because it is too expensive; that infrastructure built by government is too expensive; that government-funded pension schemes must...

The more equally and impartially taxes are laid, the fewer will be necessary, and more money raised. —John Trenchard. Cato’s Letters No. 89, Every man’s true interest found in the general interest. How little this is considered, Saturday, August 11, 1722. Sales taxes...

Why income taxes can never be fair or workable Despite thousands of tweaks to income tax codes, it has proved impossible to define income without providing room for evasion. Efforts to close loopholes have simply led to ever more detailed and arbitrary provisions....

To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father’s has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have, not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of...

The tyranny of progressive taxes But in all cases, when those who lay the tax upon others exempt themselves, there is tyranny. —Joseph Priestley. An Essay on the First Principles of Government and on the Nature of Political, Civil, and Religious Liberty, 1771....

But great as our tax burden is, it has not kept pace with public spending. For decades, we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children’s future for the temporary convenience of the present. To continue this long trend is to guarantee...

We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our...

By continual taxes and seizures upon what they gain, poverty subdues their spirits, and makes them more patiently suffer all kind of injustice and violence that can be offered them, without thoughts or motion to rebellion: And so … it is impossible for a people...

Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, “What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power.” But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as...

If, in taxing labor and manufactures, we exceed a certain proportion, we discourage industry, and destroy that labor and those manufactures. The like may be said of trade and navigation; they will bear but limited burdens: And we find by experience, that when higher...

The proprietor of stock is necessarily a citizen of the world, and is not necessarily attached to any particular country. He would be apt to abandon the country in which he was exposed to a vexatious inquisition, in order to be assessed to a burdensome tax, and would...

When the law interferes with people’s pursuit of their own values, they will try to find a way around. They will evade the law, they will break the law, or they will leave the country. Few of us believe in a moral code that justifies forcing people to give up much of...

Every man is under the natural duty of contributing to the necessities of the society; and this is all the laws should enforce on him. —Thomas Jefferson. Letter to Francis Gilmer, June 17. 1816. Taxation is a necessary evil—evil because it is a seizure of private...