Laffer Curve Quotes

It's kind of hard to sell 'trickle down,' so the supply-side formula was the only way to get a tax policy that was really 'trickle down.' Supply-side is 'trickle-down' theory.

High tax rates that people don't actually pay do not bring the government as much revenue as lower tax rates that they do pay.

If a tax cut increases government revenues, you haven't cut taxes enough.

The Laffer Curve illustrates the basic idea that changes in tax rates have two effects on tax revenues: the arithmetic effect and the economic effect.

It seems difficult to understand that high rates of taxation do not necessarily mean high revenue for the government, and that more revenue may often be obtained with lower tax rates.

When you look at the government, when the government collects a buck, it's not free. They have to spend resources, the IRS, audits, all this sort of crap, to collect the dollar. I'm not assuming any Laffer curve effect here at all. There are just transactions costs of collecting that money.

The idea behind Reaganomics is this: a rising tide lifts all yachts.

Arthur Laffer's idea, that lowering taxes could increase revenues, was logically correct. If tax rates are high enough, then people will go to such lengths to avoid them that cutting taxes can increase revenues. What he was wrong about was in thinking that income tax rates were already so high in the 1970s that cutting them would raise revenues.

I used the so-called Laffer Curve all the time in my classes and with anyone else who would listen to me to illustrate the trade-off between tax rates and tax revenues.

At a certain point, you can't tax people beyond a certain level.

It was an absurd theory that by cutting taxes you would increase government revenues, because the growth of the economy would create an overflow of taxes that would fall into the government coffers.

The Laffer Curve, by the way, was not invented by me.

Every specific tax, as well as the nation's whole tax system, becomes self-defeating above a certain height of the rates.

In the early stages of the state, taxes are light in their incidence, but fetch in a large revenue...As time passes and kings succeed each other, they lose their tribal habits in favor of more civilized ones. Their needs and exigencies grow...owing to the luxury in which they have been brought up. Hence they impose fresh taxes on their subjects...and sharply raise the rate of old taxes to increase their yield...But the effects on business of this rise in taxation make themselves felt. For business men are soon discouraged by the comparison of their profits with the burden of their taxes...Consequently production falls off, and with it the yield of taxation.

The story of how the Laffer Curve got its name begins with a 1978 article by Jude Wanniski in 'The Public Interest' entitled, 'Taxes, Revenues, and the Laffer Curve.'

It is a myth that higher taxes lead to less demand and slower growth. In the first three decades after World War II, US top tax rates on the wealthy were never below 70 percent.

I helped Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp develop supply-side economics.

Arthur Laffer has taught us, 'If you tax something, you get less of it.' That's why firms are moving offshore in droves. It's not about being unpatriotic. It's that it doesn't pay, after-tax, to invest in the United States.

Taken to its logical extreme, the Laffer curve makes no sense because, if you lower your taxes to zero, how are you going to get higher revenues? In practice, every government that toyed with this theory ended up with larger deficits, higher interest rates and greater social inequality.