Dick Armey Quotes

The Tax Code today is more complicated than ever, and the very people on the Republican side who denounce the Tax Code's complexity are the ones that put together what they now call a convoluted monstrosity. They put it into effect.

Before we start making blanket statements about abolishing the IRS, I think it's important to focus on what the tax code for the 21st century should look like.

The current tax code is a daily mugging.

We could quite easily, Republicans and Democrats working together, do something that everybody in America desires, and that is a simplification of our Tax Code.

Finally, the House is working to require a comprehensive federal review of IRS regulations with a follow-up report to Congress on possible actions to reduce the tax paperwork burden imposed on small businesses.

I think that taxes would be fair if we first get rid of the tax code. This is the ultimate solution, not to just say we're going to trim around the edges, not to say that we will try to simplify a little of this and a little of that. The problem is, replace the tax code, so we can establish tax fairness for everybody.

Rather than passing a thousand pages of tax reform legislation and restarting the tax code manipulation process, we should change the paradigm. It is time to eliminate the IRS and repeal the 16th Amendment.

It is easy to talk about tax simplification, and we all know it is very difficult to accomplish; but for the last three Congresses, I have offered a tax simplification bill that would include a paid-for repeal of alternative minimum tax.

The tax code has been flawed and inefficient for a very long time, precisely because fixing it could be so terribly disruptive.

As chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee - the chief tax-writing body in Congress - I understand that true comprehensive tax reform is tremendously difficult.

For years, people have begged Washington for a tax code that is simple and easy to understand.

Our tax code is arcane, burdensome and unwieldy. In the years since Ronald Reagan's 1986 Tax Reform Act, the code has gone from fewer than 30,000 pages to more than 70,000.

For years, comprehensive tax reform has eluded legislators.

The current tax code is harder to understand than Bob Dylan reading Finnegans Wake in a wind tunnel.

One of the high spots of the decade for me was offering the bill which culminated in the tax act of 1986, which brought rates down. That was the most difficult problem to solve: how to make the tax system of the United States more fair. We tried to make it simpler, but we failed on that one.

The tax code is a monstrosity and there's only one thing to do with it. Scrap it, kill it, drive a stake through its heart, bury it and hope it never rises again to terrorize the American people.

Over the longer term, we need to work toward a pro-growth tax code that is fairer and simpler than what we have now. Anything that meets those criteria is going to be better than the failing and dysfunctional tax code we have today.

When we're done simplifying the tax code, getting the lobbyist carve outs our of the tax code, lowering our rates and letting people have a simple system, most Americans will be able to fill out their taxes on a postcard.

Taxation, for example, is eternally lively; it concerns nine-tenths of us more directly than either smallpox or golf, and has just as much drama in it; moreover, it has been mellowed and made gay by as many gaudy, preposterous theories

As chairman of the tax-writing House Ways & Means Committee, I continue to be inspired by President Reagan's 1985 national address to the American people as he challenged them to join him in boldly reforming the broken, complex tax code.

The Enterprise Value Tax is unprecedented, punitive, and has no justification in the tax code.

Repeal of the individual AMT has been a fundamental element of Republican tax reform campaign promises for years.

Our broken tax code is one of the main reasons the United States lags behind when it comes to economic growth, job creation, and competitiveness. Without pro-growth tax reform, our workers and our businesses will continue to suffer.

The complexity of a tax system is every bit as damaging to competitiveness as the overall tax rate. The more convoluted the tax code becomes, the more time we have to take off work to comply with it.

Simply looking at the status quo and suggesting that the tax code is sacrosanct and can never change, and that decisions made in the '80s and '90s can never change, is absurd.