George Will: Income Tax quotes

Taxes made simple

Excerpts:

[on the FICA scream]: "Indignant children, holding in trembling hands their first paychecks, demand to know what FICA is and why it is feasting on their pay. "


"the tax code is 10 times longer than the Bible, without the good news."

"Many conservatives ... believe that although most Americans should be paying lower taxes, more Americans should be paying taxes. The fact that 46.7 million earners pay no income tax creates moral hazard - incentives for perverse behavior: Free-riding people have scant incentive to restrain the growth of government they are not paying for with income taxes."

"one-third of the 143 million tax returns filed by individual earners for 2007 that showed no tax liability, additional millions of households have incomes low enough to exempt them from filing tax returns. The bottom two quintiles of earners have negative income tax liabilities - they receive cash payments from the government via refundable tax credits. "

"Washington doesn't have a revenue problem. It has a spending problem."

Comment: George Will ... always a good read!