Tax reform

“ That's when Congress passed the new tax reform bill, which will cut the top tax rate from 50 percent to 28 percent and for 8 out of 10 Americans will mean a top rate of no more than 15 percent. For the 4 years since our first tax cut found its footing, the American economy has been climbing to the mountaintop. With tax reform, America is going to shoot for the stars. ”

“ We need to bring down our tax rate so we can create jobs, wealth, and opportunity right here, in the United States of America, so we can bring our hobs back and bring our businesses back. We want tax reform that puts America First. We want tax reform that makes America great again. ”

“ The goal of tax reform should be to curb or eliminate loopholes and use those savings to lower tax rates across the board – not to fund more wasteful Government spending. Tax reform should be revenue-neutral and should not be an excuse to raise taxes on the American people. ”

“ Now is our best chance for bipartisan, comprehensive tax reform that encourages job creation and helps bring down the deficit. The American people deserve a tax code that helps small businesses spend less time filling out complicated forms, and more time expanding and hiring; a tax code that ensures billionaires with high-powered accountants can’t pay a lower rate than their hard-working secretaries; a tax code that lowers incentives to move jobs overseas, and lowers tax rates for businesses and manufacturers that create jobs right here in America. ”

“ Until it has, and until statesmen use more care in tax legislation and the regulation of the system, and officers are more conscientious in carrying it out, we need not hope for any rapid movement in tax reform. The tendency here, as in all other reforms, especially where needed, is for some person to suggest a certain political nostrum—like the single tax—for the immediate and complete reform of the system and the entire renovation and purification of society. ”

“ I turn now to the key legislative reform I commend to this Congress for 1995 which is tax reform. As we move toward the Twenty-First Century, we must establish a Progressive Tax System capable of funding the inevitable requirements of development and modernization while simultaneously relieving the burden from our poorer sectors. We must simplify our tax system, broaden its base, lower its rates, make it more progressive, economically efficient, and socially equitable ”

“ Over the last 2 years, as I campaigned steadily for tax reform, I spoke to you often about the need to rid our tax system of the special interests, those interests who put their advantage above the good of the Nation as a whole. Well, with bipartisan support we achieved a remarkable victory with tax reform, lowering rates and making it fairer for all Americans. ”

“ On tax reform, we want to make corporate rates lower and bring down individual rates for you, the American people, in order to provide the incentives that spur economic growth. The tax reform bill passed last year by the House has its weak points, but it succeeded in lowering both corporate rates and income tax rates for most individuals. ”

“ The time is arriving when we can have further tax reduction, when, unless we wish to hamper the people in their right to earn a living, we must have tax reform. The method of raising revenue ought not to impede the transaction of business ”

“ And we’ll enact commonsense tax reform that includes closing wasteful tax loopholes for the wealthy and well-connected – loopholes like the ones that can allow a billionaire to pay a lower tax rate than his or her secretary. ”

“ Anybody can reduce taxes, but it is not so easy to stand in the gap and resist the passage of increasing appropriation bills which would make tax reduction impossible. It will be very easy to measure the strength of the attachment to reduced taxation by the power with which increased appropriations are resisted. If at the close of the present session the Congress has kept within the budget which I propose to present, it will then be possible to have a moderate amount of tax reduction and all the tax reform that the Congress may wish for during the next fiscal year. ”

“ We have cut tax rates by almost 25 percent, yet the tax system remains unfair and limits our potential for growth. Exclusions and exemptions cause similar incomes to be taxed at different levels. Low-income families face steep tax barriers that make hard lives even harder. The Treasury Department has produced an excellent reform plan, whose principles will guide the final proposal that we will ask you to enact.
One thing that tax reform will not be is a tax increase in disguise. ”

“ On another front, we'll keep speaking out, pushing as hard as we can, to give all Americans new opportunity to build a better life. That means passage of our tax reform to lower rates, nearly double the personal exemption, raise the standard deduction, and increase the earned-income tax credit. Tax reform is a must, because it would turn private energies away from efforts to save another dollar in taxes toward efforts to earn another dollar. ”

“ If we get that in place, we are actually removing half of the fiscal cliff. Half of the danger to our economy is removed by that single step.
And what we can then do is shape a process whereby we look at tax reform -- which I'm very eager to do. I think we can simplify our tax system. I think we can make it more efficient. ”

“ It is important that government now rationalize incentives to business to keep inefficient enterprises from proliferating. To promote efficiency and productivity in the financial sector, this Congress must now pass the remaining component measures of the Comprehensive Tax Reform Program -- both to simplify taxation and to increase revenue generation. ”

“ My Administration is committed to creating a business climate in which minority business enterprises can thrive and expand. The Unified Framework for Fixing Our Broken Tax Code, my Administration's basic plan for tax cuts and tax reform, calls for a steep reduction to the corporate tax rate from 35 to 20 percent. This reform will lift up our entrepreneurs, our businesses, and our families. ”

“ These facts show that when a reduction of taxation is about to take place, it is exceedingly important that great care and judgment should be exercised in the selection of the tax to be reduced, in order that the maximum of relief may be afforded to the public, with the minimum of injury to the Revenue. ”

“ So, that's why I proposed a sweeping new reform that will reduce the 14 tax brackets we now have to only 3-a reform that will reduce the many special tax privileges. If our plan goes through, making out your taxes each year will be more simple, and it will reduce all those feelings of unfairness and injustice that so many Americans rightly harbor about our current tax code. ”

“ First, we want to reform the tax system, make it more fair and simple for all, so we can bring down tax rates for individuals and businesses, provide incentives for stronger growth, and thereby increase revenues to government. ”

“ No doubt tax reduction without reform would sound simpler and more attractive to many—but our growth is also hampered by a host of tax inequities and special preferences which have distorted the flow of investment. ”

“ For if we are to return, as at least one candidate for high office is insisting, to the old order of things, we are abandoning not merely the so-called Full Rendition law, but all other of the recent enactments upon the same subject. We are to abandon the intangible tax law, the franchise tax law, the law taxing the gross receipts of certain corporations, and all other of the statutes of the Twenty-ninth and Thirtieth Legislatures by which a fairer adjustment of the burdens of government was sought to be secured. ”

“ This reform will be welcome relief for America's small businesses, which often pay taxes at the highest rate. And help for small business means jobs for Americans. (Applause.) We simplified the Tax Code by reducing the number of tax rates from the current five rates to four lower ones, 10 percent, 15, 25 and 33 percent. In my plan, no one is targeted in or targeted out. Everyone who pays income taxes will get relief. ”

“ But that kind of reform has to go hand-in-hand with doing some more work to reform our tax code so that wealthy individuals, the biggest corporations can't take advantage of loopholes and deductions that aren't available to most of the folks standing up here -- aren't available to most Americans. ”

“ So we have a more broken tax system that is providing greater incentive to evade the U.S. tax system and to locate production overseas. And so the opportunity is to reform the corporate tax system in a way that would maintain our competitiveness and actually encourage domestic production in the United States. ”

“ The best test to apply to the several existing taxes for the discovery of the one which may be reduced most extensively, with the least proportionate loss to the revenue, is probably this: excluding from the examination those taxes, the produce of which is greatly affected by changes in the habits of the people, as the taxes on spirits, tobacco, and hair-powder, let each be examined as to whether its productiveness has kept pace with the increasing numbers and prosperity of the nation. And that tax which proves most defective under this test is, in all probability, the one we are in quest of. ”

“ And, in my judgment, there can be no honest attempt at a fair adjustment of the burdens of a direct tax upon the general property of this or any other country which does not make a decent effort at an equalization in proportion to the true value of each article which is taxed. The true value of an article is necessarily its fair, full value, nothing more and nothing less. If we levy general property taxes, we are compelled to require by law that all property subject to the levy shall be taxed in proportion to its value, and such a rule is inevitably a law for a "full rendition." ”

“ If a government were to command that its taxables should be listed at one-fourth their full value, and that a tax of $1 on the $100 should be levied on the values so listed, it would in substance have enacted a law for the taxation of its property, at full value, at 25 cents on each $100, and no amount of figuring can make out of it anything less or anything more. ”

“ This is the whole of the tax question, as I see it—to deal justly with every man in the sight of God—to tax every person as nearly as possible in proportion to his ability to pay. And under any ad valorem system the measure of the ability of each individual and the only approximately fair measure which the ingenuity of man has ever been able to devise is found in the reasonable, full value of the taxable property of every owner. ”

“ It can not be successfully denied that the new tax laws have tended largely toward an equitable distribution of tax burdens and that in doing this they have diminished the amount paid by the average citizen. The intangible assets tax alone brought in a revenue for 1907 of $1,470,000 to the State and its counties, and cost for its administration the insignificant sum of $2,650, a result which can not be surpassed in the history of governmental finance. ”

“ We can make our tax laws fairer, we can make them simpler and easier to understand, and at the same time, we can, and we will, reduce the tax burden on American citizens by $25 billion.
The tax reforms and the tax reductions go together. Only with the long overdue reforms will the full tax cut be advisable.
Almost $17 billion in income tax cuts will go to individuals. Ninety-six percent of all American taxpayers will see their taxes go down. For a typical family of four, this means an annual saving of more than $250 a year, or a tax reduction of about 20 percent. ”

“ The introduction of a substantial government transfer tax on all transactions might prove the most serviceable reform available, with a view to mitigating the predominance of speculation over enterprise in the United States. ”

“ Taxation is a boastful performance for a legislature and ministry who sit without consulting the mass of the people; it is a baneful subject for a people powerless in the State. To tax a man without his concurrence, without listening to his objections, without his having any voice in the nomination of the tax leviers, is clearly robbery, and if you will not be honest, the people must refuse to be robbed. If you will not reform the representation, then the unenfranchised taxpayers will revolt. If they must not have the right to vote, they will not regard it as a duty to pay. ”

“ Taxation would not then fall unduly on the man of moderate means; and while none would be entirely exempt from assessment, all, in proportion to their pecuniary abilities, would contribute toward the support of the State. A modification of the internal-revenue system, by a large reduction in the number of articles now subject to tax, would be followed by results equally advantageous to the citizen and the Government. ”

“ I therefore ask the support of Congress for a new revenue package for urgent enactment. This will widen the tax base and rationalize the existing structure. Reforms in tax administration must aim to achieve simplicity, uniformity, and efficiency. This is the best way to arrest the present epidemic of tax avoidance and evasion. Growth cannot take place without some sacrifice from everyone of us. But let us agree that the tax burden must fall heaviest on those who can best bear it. But we must not tax at levels that will become a drag on the economy. ”