Thomas Jefferson Taxation Quotations

Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometric progression as they rise

Taxation is, in fact, the most difficult function of government and that against which their citizens are most apt to be refractory.

Many of the opposition [to the new Federal Constitution] wish to take from Congress the power of internal taxation. Calculation has convinced me that this would be very mischievous.

Would it not be better to simplify the system of taxation rather than to spread it over such a variety of subjects and pass through so many new hands.

Taxes should be continued by annual or biennial reeactments, because a constant hold, by the nation, of the strings of the public purse is a salutary restraint from which an honest government ought not wish, nor a corrupt one to be permitted, to be free.

The fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follow that, and in its turn wretchedness and oppression.

Our properties within our own territories [should not] be taxed or regulated by any power on earth but our own.

Still less, let it be proposed that our properties within our own territories shall be taxed or regulated by any power on earth but our own. The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time: the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.

It must be observed that our revenues are raised almost wholly on imported goods.

Taxes should be proportioned to what may be annually spared by the individual.