Taxes Are Theft Quotes

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When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.
Frédéric Bastiat
Taxation is theft, purely and simply even though it is theft on a grand and colossal scale which no acknowledged criminals could hope to match. It is a compulsory seizure of the property of the State’s inhabitants, or subjects.
Murray N. Rothbard
The world, viewed philosophically, remains a series of slave camps, where citizens – tax livestock – labor under the chains of illusion in the service of their masters.
Stefan Molyneux
There can be no greater stretch of arbitrary power than to seize children from their parents, teach them whatever the authorities decree they shall be taught, and expropriate from the parents the funds to pay for the procedure.
Isabel Paterson
Yes I pay taxes... There are no ethics in the face of coercion, that is blaming the victim. Focus on the man with the gun, not the man in the crosshairs trying to survive.
Stefan Molyneux
It is easier to seize wealth than to produce it, and as long as the State makes the seizure of wealth a matter of legalized privilege, so long will the squabble for that privilege go on.
Albert Jay Nock
Free-market capitalism is a network of free and voluntary exchanges in which producers work, produce, and exchange their products for the products of others through prices voluntarily arrived at.
Murray N. Rothbard
How skillful to tax the middle class to pay for the relief of the poor, building resentment on top of humiliation! How adroit to bus poor black youngsters into poor white neighborhoods, in a violent exchange of impoverished schools, while the schools of the rich remain untouched and the wealth of the nation, doled out carefully where children need free milk, is drained for billion-dollar aircraft carriers. How ingenious to meet the demands of blacks and women for equality by giving them small special benefits, and setting them in competition with everyone else for jobs made scares by an irrational, wasteful system. How wise to turn the fear and anger of the majority toward a class of criminals bred - by economic inequity - faster than they can be put away, deflecting attention from the huge thefts of national resources carried out within the law by men in executive offices.
Howard Zinn (A People’s History of the United States)
But who would build the roads if there were no government? You mean to tell me that 300 million people in this country and 7 billion people on the planet would just sit around in their houses and think “Gee, I’d like to go visit Fred, but I can't because there isn’t a flat thing outside for me to drive on, and I don’t know how to build it and the other 300 million or 7 billion people can’t possibly do it because there aren’t any politicians and tax collectors. If they were here then we could do it. If they were here to boss us around and steal our money and really inefficiently build the flat places, then we would be set. Then I would be comfortable and confident that I could get places. But I can’t go to Fred’s house or the market because we can’t possibly build a flat space from A to B. We can make these really small devices that enable us to contact people from all over the word that fits in our pockets; we can make machines that we drive around in, but no, we can’t possibly build a flat space.
Larken Rose
Using coercion to drive charity is like using kidnapping to create love.
Stefan Molyneux
And libertarianism is good because it helps conservatives pass off a patently pro-business political agenda as a noble bid for human freedom. Whatever we may think of libertarianism as a set of ideas, practically speaking, it is a doctrine that owes its visibility to the obvious charms it holds for the wealthy and the powerful. The reason we have so many well-funded libertarians in America these days is not because libertarianism has acquired an enormous grassroots following, but because it appeals to those who are able to fund ideas. Like social Darwinism and Christian Science before it, libertarianism flatters the successful and rationalizes their core beliefs about the world. They warm to the libertarian idea that taxation is theft because they themselves don’t like to pay taxes. They fancy the libertarian notion that regulation is communist because they themselves find regulation intrusive and annoying. Libertarianism is a politics born to be subsidized. In the “free market of ideas,” it is a sure winner.
Thomas Frank (The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule)
We've got this weird dysgenic situation where we're basically just paying idiots to breed and taxing intelligent people to stay away from each other with anything remotely resembling fertility.
Stefan Molyneux
Laissez faire (in its full true meaning) opens the way to the realization of the noble dreams of socialism.
Henry George
What makes anyone think that government officials are even trying to protect us? A government is not analogous to a hired security guard. Governments do not come into existence as social service organizations or as private firms seeking to please consumers in a competitive market. Instead, they are born in conquest and nourished by plunder. They are, in short, well-armed gangs intent on organized crime. Yes, rulers have sometimes come to recognize the prudence of protecting the herd they are milking and even of improving its ‘infrastructure’ until the day they decide to slaughter the young bulls, but the idea that government officials seek to promote my interests or yours is little more than propaganda—unless, of course, you happen to belong to the class of privileged tax eaters who give significant support to the government and therefore receive in return a share of the loot.
Robert Higgs
It would be an instructive exercise for the skeptical reader to try to frame a definition of taxation which does not also include theft. Like the robber, the State demands money at the equivalent of gunpoint; if the taxpayer refuses to pay, his assets are seized by force, and if he should resist such depredation, he will be arrested or shot if he should continue to resist.
Murray N. Rothbard
Property taxes' rank right up there with 'income taxes' in terms of immorality and destructiveness. Where 'income taxes' are simply slavery using different words, 'property taxes' are just a Mafia turf racket using different words. For the former, if you earn a living on the gang's turf, they extort you. For the latter, if you own property in their territory, they extort you. The fact that most people still imagine both to be legitimate and acceptable shows just how powerful authoritarian indoctrination is. Meanwhile, even a brief objective examination of the concepts should make anyone see the lunacy of it. 'Wait, so every time I produce anything or trade with anyone, I have to give a cut to the local crime lord??' 'Wait, so I have to keep paying every year, for the privilege of keeping the property I already finished paying for??' And not only do most people not make such obvious observations, but if they hear someone else pointing out such things, the well-trained Stockholm Syndrome slaves usually make arguments condoning their own victimization. Thus is the power of the mind control that comes from repeated exposure to BS political mythology and propaganda.
Larken Rose
The law has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish, without risk, to exploit the person, liberty, and property of others. It has converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder. And it has converted lawful defense into a crime, in order to punish lawful defense...When, then, does plunder stop? It stops when it becomes more painful and more dangerous than labor.
Frédéric Bastiat
It is not right for one person to steal. It is not right for two people to steal. It is still not right for 51% of a voting population to vote for a representative who will hire a tax collector to steal for them. One of the great government lies is that theft can be moral when performed by enough people and called taxation.
Adam Kokesh (Freedom!)
Le fait est que le gouvernement, comme un bandit de grand chemin, dit à un individu: "La bourse ou la vie." Quantité de taxes, ou même la plupart, sont payées sous la contrainte d'une telle menace.
Lysander Spooner (Outrage À Chefs D'état ;Suivi De Le Droit Naturel)
Our politicians tell us we are free, even though most governments take over 50% of what we earn. They claim we get services that we need for our hard-earned money, even though we could buy the same services at half the price from the private sector. Today, we ridicule the slave-owners' claim that they "gave back" to their slaves by housing, clothing, feeding them, and bestowing upon them the "benefits" of civilization instead of leaving them in their native state. We see this as a self-serving justification for exploitation. In the future, we will view being forcibly taxed to pay for things we don't want, such as bombs for the Middle East, subsidies for tobacco, other people's abortions, regulations that put small businesses out of business, prisons for people trying to feel good, keeping life-saving medications out of the hands of dying people, etc., as taking away our freedom. When even a small portion of our lives is spent enslaved, that part tends to dominate the rest of our time. If we don't put our servitude first as we structure the remainder of our lives, our masters will make sure we regret it. How much freedom do we need to survive and how much do we need to thrive?
Mary J. Ruwart
Sales taxes are just as much theft as any other taxes, even though everyone chooses to pay them as they make consumer choices. A sales tax is simply conditional theft, just like import taxes or any other taxes on trade.
Adam Kokesh (Freedom!)
How skillful to tax the middle class to pay for the relief of the poor, building resentment on top of humiliation! How adroit to bus poor black youngsters into poor white neighborhoods, in a violent exchange of impoverished schools, while the schools of the rich remain untouched and the wealth of the nation, doled out carefully where children need free milk, is drained for billion-dollar aircraft carriers. How ingenious to meet the demands of blacks and women for equality by giving them small special benefits, and setting them in competition with everyone else for jobs made scarce by an irrational, wasteful system. How wise to turn the fear and anger of the majority toward a class of criminals bred—by economic inequity—faster than they can be put away, deflecting attention from the huge thefts of national resources carried out within the law by men in executive offices.
Howard Zinn (A People's History of the United States)
Plunder by force or subterfuge is called theft, larceny, burglary, swindling. Plunder under color of law can take the form of ‘economic regulation’, ‘too big to fail’, ‘corporate subsidies’, bail-outs, tax exemptions, and a plethora of other noble-sounding, but ultimately self-serving programs.
Joseph Befumo (The Republicrat Junta: How Two Corrupt Parties, in Collusion with Corporate Criminals, have Subverted Democracy, Deceived the People, and Hijacked Our Constitutional Government)
Today the message most commentators take from Adam Smith is that government should get out of the way. But that was not Smith’s message. He was enthusiastic about government regulation so long as it wasn’t simply a ruse to advantage one set of commercial interests over another. When “regulation . . . is in favor of the workmen,” he wrote in The Wealth of Nations, “it is always just and equitable.” He was equally enthusiastic about the taxes needed to fund effective governance. “Every tax,” he wrote, “is to the person who pays it a badge, not of slavery but of liberty.”9 Contemporary libertarians who invoke Smith before decrying labor laws or comparing taxation to theft seem to have skipped these passages. Far from a tribune of unregulated markets, Smith was a celebrant of effective governance. His biggest concern about the state wasn’t that it would be overbearing but that it would be overly beholden to narrow private interests. His greatest ire was reserved not for public officials but for powerful merchants who combined to rig public policies and repress private wages. These “tribes of monopoly” he compared with an “overgrown standing army” that had “become formidable to the government, and upon many occasions intimidate the legislature.” Too often, Smith maintained, concentrated economic power skewed the crafting of government policy. “Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate the differences between masters and their workmen,” he complained, “its counsellors are always the masters. . . . They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.”10
Jacob S. Hacker (American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Prosper)
income taxes are not the only taxes you pay in life. They are just the financial form. Everything we do has a toll attached to it. Waiting around is a tax on traveling. Rumors and gossip are the taxes that come from acquiring a public persona. Disagreements and occasional frustration are taxes placed on even the happiest of relationships. Theft is a tax on abundance and having things that other people want. Stress and problems are tariffs that come attached to success.
Ryan Holiday (The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living)
Warning: “Good Intentions” contains violence, explicit sex, nudity, inappropriate use of church property, portrayals of beings divine and demonic bearing little or no resemblance to established religion or mythology, trespassing, bad language, sacrilege, blasphemy, attempted murder, arguable murder, divinely mandated murder, justifiable murder, filthy murder, sexual promiscuity, kidnapping, attempted rape, arson, dead animals, desecrated graves, gang activity, theft, assault and battery, panties, misuse of the 911 system, fantasy depictions of sorcery and witchcraft, multiple references to various matters of fandom, questionable interrogation tactics, cell phone abuse, reckless driving, consistent abuse of vampires (because they deserve it), even more explicit sex, illegal use of firearms within city limits, polyamory, abuse of authority, hit and run driving, destruction of private property, underage drinking, disturbances of the peace, disorderly conduct, internet harassment, bearers of false witness, mayhem, dismemberment, falsification of records, tax evasion, an uncomfortably sexy mother, bad study habits, and a very silly white guy inappropriately calling another white guy “nigga” (for which he will surely suffer). All characters depicted herein are over the age of 18, with the exception of one little girl who merely needs to get her cat out of a tree. Don’t worry, nothing bad happens to her. She makes it through the story just fine.
Elliott Kay (Good Intentions (Good Intentions, #1))
Because they are all ultimately funded via both direct and indirect theft [taxes], and counterfeiting [central bank monopolies], all governments are essentially, at their very cores, 100% corrupt criminal scams which cannot be “reformed”,”improved”, nor “limited” in scope, simply because of their innate criminal nature. 
Taking the State wherever found, striking into its history at any point, one sees no way to differentiate the activities of its founders, administrators and beneficiaries from those of a professional-criminal class.
Albert Jay Nock
If government is truly limited to being small and nearly irrelevant, there will be no incentive to “own” government. For this change to occur, the following will be required: a philosophical rejection of government waging war without consent, running people’s lives, and violating social or economic liberty; nullification of laws by public pressure or by state action; legalization of private alternatives to all government programs; prohibition of fraudulent money, private and government; peaceful civil disobedience; acceptance of responsibility to care for oneself and one’s family instead of relying on government or private theft; refusal to participate in government crimes through the military and tax system with full realization of the risks of practicing civil disobedience since government will not go away quietly; jury nullification of bad laws, especially with regard to taxes, drugs, and overregulation of social and voluntary activities; and acceptance that, while sins and vices may be a negative, they aren’t in themselves crimes and are not to be restricted by the state.
Ron Paul (Swords into Plowshares: A Life in Wartime and a Future of Peace and Prosperity)
Lee, who had borne the guilt of polluting public waters and been cheated by a dishonest official at a tax office, wanted to feel vindicated. The tax office was corrupt, and taxes themselves were connected to dishonesty, he felt.... At issue in politics was trust. It was hard enough to trust people close at hand, and very hard to trust those far away; to locally rooted people, Washington D.C, felt very very far away. ...[Everyone] felt like victims of a frightening loss--or was it theft?--of their cultural home, their place in the world, and their honor.
Arlie Russell Hochschild (Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right)
ADVENTURERS AVAUNT! There is no greater plague upon the lands than the chartered adventurer. Crown-sanctioned mischief makers, brigands whose thefts, casual murders, rapine and pillage are excused where the same things done by a cobbler or a milkmaid would be answered with severings of hands or other appendages, plus brandings—or all of those and hanging or death by drawing between four horses. Yet there is no more necessary plague. Adventurers make even kings think twice about cruelly oppressing all who pass within reach, teach prudence to high priests and even rogue wizards, and are almost the only curb upon the numbers of dragons and other large and monstrous beasts. On the whole, I think the balance comes out about even. What makes us keep adventuring charters instead of burning them along with their bearers is the entertainment adventurers afford the populace. In hamlets and at waymoots, after one’s grumbled about the weather, taxes, the latest rumors of war and orc raids, and the all-too-paltry gossip about the indiscretions of royalty and nobility, there’s little else to talk about but the foolish escapades of adventurers. Thundaerlel Maurlatrimm Four Decades of Innkeeping published in the Year of the Highmantle
Ed Greenwood (Swords of Eveningstar (The Knights of Myth Drannor #1))
Comme l'impôt est obligatoire pour tous, qu'ils votent ou non, une large proportion de ceux qui votent le font sans aucun doute pour éviter que leur propre argent ne soit utilisé contre eux; alors que, en fait, ils se fussent volontiers abstenus de voter, si par là ils avaient pu échapper ne serait-ce qu'à l'impôt, sans parler de toutes les autres usurpations et tyrannies du gouvernement. Prendre le bien d'un homme sans son accord, puis conclure à son consentement parce qu'il tente, en votant, d'empêcher que son bien ne soit utilisé pour lui faire tort, voilà une preuve bien insuffisante de son consentement à soutenir la Constitution. Ce n'est en réalité aucunement une preuve. Puisque tous les hommes qui soutiennent la Constitution en votant (pour autant qu'il existe de tels hommes) le font secrètement (par scrutin secret), et de manière à éviter toute responsabilité personnelle pour l'action de leurs agents ou représentants, on ne saurait dire en droit ou en raison qu'il existe un seul homme qui soutienne la Constitution en votant. Puisque tout vote est secret (par scrutin secret), et puisque tout gouvernement secret est par nécessité une association secrète de voleurs, tyrans et assassins, le fait général que notre gouvernement, dans la pratique, opère par le moyen d'un tel vote prouve seulement qu'il y a parmi nous une association secrète de voleurs, tyrans et assassins, dont le but est de voler, asservir et -- s'il le faut pour accomplir leurs desseins -- assassiner le reste de la population. Le simple fait qu'une telle association existe ne prouve en rien que "le peuple des Etats-Unis", ni aucun individu parmi ce peuple, soutienne volontairement la Constitution. Les partisans visibles de la Constitution, comme les partisans visibles de la plupart des autres gouvernements, se rangent dans trois catégories, à savoir: 1. Les scélérats, classe nombreuse et active; le gouvernement est pour eux un instrument qu'ils utiliseront pour s'agrandir ou s'enrichir; 2. Les dupes -- vaste catégorie, sans nul doute, dont chaque membre, parce qu'on lui attribue une voix sur des millions pour décider ce qu'il peut faire de sa personne et de ses biens, et parce qu'on l'autorise à avoir, pour voler, asservir et assassiner autrui, cette même voix que d'autres ont pour le voler, l'asservir et l'assassiner, est assez sot pour imaginer qu'il est "un homme libre", un "souverain"; assez sot pour imaginer que ce gouvernement est "un gouvernement libre", "un gouvernement de l'égalité des droits", "le meilleur gouvernement qu'il y ait sur terre", et autres absurdités de ce genre; 3. Une catégorie qui a quelque intelligence des vices du gouvernement, mais qui ou bien ne sait comment s'en débarrasser, ou bien ne choisit pas de sacrifier ses intérêts privés au point de se dévouer sérieusement et gravement à la tâche de promouvoir un changement. Le fait est que le gouvernement, comme un bandit de grand chemin, dit à un individu: "La bourse ou la vie." Quantité de taxes, ou même la plupart, sont payées sous la contrainte d'une telle menace.
Lysander Spooner (Outrage À Chefs D'état ;Suivi De Le Droit Naturel)
Corruption in American politics is hardly new, of course, but previously, for the most part, it was conducted mainly on the local level. It was also conducted by Democrats. There were exceptions, of course, especially during Reconstruction, and in the administration of President Grant, and in the Teapot Dome scandal of the Harding administration. But generally, when we think of political corruption, we think of the Democratic Party machines in America’s big cities, of the city “bosses” using the political system to rig votes, install cronies in office, extort favors from businesses, collect bribes for the assignment of city contracts, and generally rip off the local taxpayer and loot the treasury. Just as slavery and white supremacy were the tools of Democratic exploitation in the South, the boss system was the party’s tool of corruption and theft in cities throughout the country. The most famous Democratic bosses were Edward Crump, mayor of Memphis from 1910 to 1916; Tom Pendergast, who ran the Jackson County Democratic Club and controlled local politics in Kansas City, Missouri, from 1911 until his conviction for tax fraud in 1939; Frank Hague, mayor of Jersey City from 1917 to 1947; and Richard Daley, who was mayor of Chicago from 1955 to 1976.
Dinesh D'Souza (Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party)
Even the most doctrinaire libertarian could argue that, although taxation may amount to a kind of theft, some such theft would in fact be proper if and only if it went to guarantee the survival of citizens: through a public healthcare option, a negative income tax or basic income, and of course a solid national defense—no more, no less. To further aim the guns of government where none are needed is trigger-happy and thuggish.
Shmuel Pernicone (Why We Resist: Letter From a Young Patriot in the Age of Trump)
the income tax is theft and the property tax is extortion,
Aaron Barksdale (Libertarianism in a Nutshell: A Guide to Libertarian Principles and How to Apply Them)
Unfortunately, all of these things that government provides have a cost and need to be paid for. Typically, they are funded through taxation. Certain libertarians proclaim, “All taxes are theft.” Perhaps, but the claims would have more force if libertarians would refuse to call the police when their homes have been robbed, or the fire department when their homes are burning. One could say that this holds the libertarian to too high a standard, since we must all live in the world as it is and obey its rules. But since we do live in the world, we must pay for the services we consume; this is not theft, it is simply being an adult.
John Médaille (Toward a Truly Free Market: A Distributist Perspective on the Role of Government, Taxes, Health Care, Deficits, and More (Culture of Enterprise))
Professor Walter Williams argues that socialism, because of its forced redistribution of wealth, is immoral and akin to theft. “Reaching into one’s pocket to assist his fellow man is noble and worthy of praise,” writes Williams. “Reaching into another person’s pocket to assist one’s fellow man is despicable and worthy of condemnation.”9 Some may believe it’s not theft when the duly elected representatives of the people legislate income redistributions. But Dr. Williams’s use of the term “theft” is far more appropriate than Nancy Pelosi’s use of the same word to describe the Trump income tax cuts. “This tax cut for corporate America is theft. It’s theft from the future,” asserted Pelosi. “Their flagship issue is to give tax breaks to the wealthiest people in the country at the expense of our children’s future.
David Limbaugh (Guilty By Reason of Insanity: Why The Democrats Must Not Win)
– E quem é esse aí? – rosnou Neville. – Com todos os diabos! Se vocês não pararem com esses feitiços, juro que não vou me responsabilizar por meus atos. Já disse mil vezes que é proibido praticar feitiçaria em Rinde! Primeiro, é preciso fazer um requerimento por escrito; depois, pagar as estampilhas e o imposto…
Andrezj Sapowski
In 1969, there were 502 convictions for tax fraud. Such cases, called “white-collar crimes,” usually involve people with a good deal of money. Of those convicted, 20 percent ended up in jail. The fraud averaged $190,000 per case; their sentences averaged seven months. That same year, for burglary and auto theft (crimes of the poor) 60 percent ended up in prison. The auto thefts averaged $992; the sentences averaged eighteen months. The burglaries averaged $321; the sentences averaged thirty-three months.
Howard Zinn (A People's History of the United States)
Duncan yawned and scratched at a spot on his temple. “According to my reckoning, you shall be punished thusly. Hanged twice, for major theft and unlawfully slaying a beast in the Comte’s forest. Lashed… let me see… four hundred and twenty-seven times for adultery, fornication and minor theft. Lastly, imprisoned for tax evasion and rigging boxing matches for,” the lieutenant paused and totted up the list of offences, “Ninety-six years.” Roger the Goat nodded gravely, and asked, “In what order?
Thaddeus White (Bane of Souls)
Where once treaties signed at gunpoint dispossessed Africa’s inhabitants of their land, gold and diamonds, today phalanxes of lawyers representing oil and mineral companies with annual revenues in the hundreds of billions of dollars impose miserly terms on African governments and employ tax dodges to bleed profit from destitute nations.
Tom Burgis (The Looting Machine: Warlords, Tycoons, Smugglers and the Systematic Theft of Africa’s Wealth)
It’s as if the concept of taxation as theft—rather than as a shared burden that all should contribute toward as the cost of maintaining a civil society—is now so widely shared that many people applaud those who have figured out how to game the system and pay less than their fair share rather than condemn them as social parasites who claim society’s benefits without paying for them.
Bruce Bartlett (The Benefit and The Burden: Tax Reform-Why We Need It and What It Will Take)
In the end, the taxes that are evaded have to be compensated for by higher taxes on the law-abiding, often middle class households, in the United States, Europe and developing countries. Nothing in the logic of free exchange justifies this theft.
Gabriel Zucman (The Hidden Wealth of Nations: The Scourge of Tax Havens)
creating a huge gang - one far too big and powerful for the average person to resist  - and giving that gang societal permission to control and extort everyone else (by way of “law” and “taxes”), in the hope that that gang will prevent theft and thuggery , is an absurd idea that I “bought into” for the first 35 years of my life.
Shepard Thevoluntaryist (Anarchy Exposed: A former police officer reports on his investigative journey into anarchism.)
Seven months later, Enron filed for bankruptcy. The golden goose of corporate capitalism collapsed amid charges of ‘greed, bribery, corruption, deceit, parasitism, speculation, insider trading, scams, nepotism, tax avoidance, environmental destruction, human rights abuses, exploitation, theft of workers’ entitlements, job losses, use of state machinery against workers and Indigenous peoples, cosy relationships with government, and monopoly manipulation of prices and markets’.
Jane Gleeson-White (Double Entry: How the Merchants of Venice Created Modern Finance)
Most people are unaware that nearly every federal agency includes some type of law enforcement division. For example, the United States Postal Service has a law enforcement wing—the Postal Inspection Service. Postal Inspection agents enforce over two hundred federal laws related to crimes involving the postal system, its employees, and its customers. Each year, these agents make over five thousand arrests, primarily for crimes such as mail theft, mail fraud, and illegally mailing drugs and weapons. Interestingly, these agents have a reputation of being some of the most dedicated and intelligent in all of federal law enforcement. Even the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) and EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) have law enforcement divisions with gun-carrying federal agents capable of making arrests for violations of federal tax and environmental law.
Maclen Stanley (The Law Says What?: Stuff You Didn’t Know About the Law (but Really Should!))
In June 2004, Khodorkovsky and his business partner, Platon Lebedev, were put on trial and convicted of six counts of fraud, two of tax evasion, and one of theft. Each was sentenced to nine years in prison.
Bill Browder (Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice)
There’s an arms race on. The protesters begin to think they might even be able to outspend the police, who are funded by a public convinced that all taxes are theft, but giving away public timber is not.
Richard Powers (The Overstory)
If death was but a common tax, an expected loss, then murder was a theft which robbed you of everything you held dear and basked in taunting your anguish.
I.Q. Malcolm (Church of Thieves (Church of Thieves, #1))
the looting began—a wild orgy of self-dealing, kickback schemes, siphoning, embezzlement, protection rackets, tax fraud, and outright theft that enriched the men around the new president.
Daniel Silva (The Cellist (Gabriel Allon, #21))
In North America, it's estimated that $1 billion worth of wood is poached yearly. The Forest Service has pegged the value of poached wood from its land at $100 million annually; in recent years, the agency estimates, 1 in 10 trees felled on public lands in the United States were harvested illegally. Associations of private timber companies gauge the value of wood stolen from them at around $350 million annually. In British Columbia, experts put the cost of timber theft from publicly managed forests at $20 million a year. Globally, the black market for timber is estimated at $157 billion, a figure that includes the market value of the wood, unpaid taxes, and lost revenues. Along with illegal fishing and the black-market animal trade, timber poaching contributes to a $1 trillion illegal wildlife-trade industry that is monitored by international crime organizations such as Interpol.
Lyndsie Bourgon (Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America's Woods)
Theft is a tax on abundance and having things that other people want.
Ryan Holiday (The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living)
In the 1819 Supreme Court case of McCulloch vs Maryland, Chief justtice John Marshall is famously quoted, comparing the power to tax with the power to destroy. This case was brought by a bank seeking to fight the government's ability to tax it.
Taxation Is Theft
Its eventual goals include the abolition of all drug laws (not just those against currently illegal narcotics and hallucinogens, but an end to prescription laws and the Food and Drug Administration as well), the abolition of the income tax, the abolition of all regulation of private sexual relations (from marriage to prostitution and everything in between), an end to public ownership and regulation of the airwaves, an end to overseas military bases and all warmaking not in direct defense of the homeland, an end to the welfare state, and an end to any legal restrictions whatsoever on speech and expression. Libertarians’ policy prescriptions are based on a simple idea with very complicated repercussions: Government, if it has any purpose at all (and many libertarians doubt it does), should be restricted to the protection of its citizens’ persons and property against direct violence and theft. In their eyes, most modern government functions, if done by private individuals, would be seen as violence and theft. Libertarians’ economic reasoning leads them to the conclusion that, left to their own devices, a free people would spontaneously develop the institutions necessary for a healthy and wealthy culture. They think that state interference in the economy, whether through taxing or regulation, makes us all poorer rather than richer. Their ideas and policy prescriptions seem unbelievably radical in the current political context. But in many ways, libertarians argue, the United States was founded on libertarian principles. The Constitution defined a role for the federal government much smaller than what it practices today, and it restricted government to a limited set of mandated powers.
Brian Doherty (Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement)
It's the knowledge I spit that's detrimental to those powerful. Mental elemental procedures to the mass of ignorance. It's an on-going, never-ending symbol of punishment for the suffering is due to its lack of acknowledgement. Masquerades, gimmicks, and monopoly games; giving your heart to this money instead of Almighty, so it's suffering and burning of flames, a burning of shame. Playing the game can never leave you the same so who is to blame? Complete conspiracy, committed theft of inherited immunity, live a life of misery and taxing our energy. A straw afloat on water of deceptive ingenuity. A false replica of me, an enemy with my name but non-resistant so I agree with my adversary.
Jose R. Coronado (The Land Flowing With Milk And Honey)
About 36 percent of education funding comes from local property taxes, the “single largest source of local revenue for schools in the United States.” These lower home values,6 which are the direct result of redlining, mean that schools in Black neighborhoods receive less funding. Therefore, redlining is why Edbuild reports that majority-white school districts receive $2,226 more per student than non-white districts: a theft of $23 billion.7
Michael Harriot (Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America)