Tax Simplification Quotes

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.

The important thing about tax reform is you make the tax code less complicated, easier for people to understand.

The nation should have a tax system that looks like someone designed it on purpose.

The tax code is very inefficient. Both the personal tax code and the corporate tax code. By closing loopholes and lowering rates, you could increase the efficiency of the tax code and create more incentives for people to invest.

Corporate tax reform is nice in theory but tough in practice. It most likely requires lower tax rates and the closing of loopholes, which many companies are sure to fight. And whatever new, lower tax rate is determined, there will probably be another country willing to lower its rate further, creating a sad race to zero.

Taxes are way too complicated, and people spend way too much time worrying about ways to get them lower.

I think a flat tax has merit. Anything would be better than the current tax code.

We need to even out the tax code for small businesses so that we lower their tax rate to 25 percent, just as we need to lower it for all businesses.

We need to stop kicking the can down the road and rethink our entire tax system toward long-term, comprehensive tax reform.

I think there's a lot of Democrats that would favor reducing the corporate tax rate as long as we find a way to close loopholes so we have a way to pay for it.

The problem with wanting the tax code to be 'simpler, fairer,' and 'pro-growth' is that it's impossible to achieve all three at the same time.

Nobody is opposed to paying taxes; governments need to coordinate, work together and simplify the law.

Tax reductions are usually simpler and less distortive. I'm certainly willing to look at getting rid of tax deductions/credits, and go to dramatically reduced rates.

Democrats must rally behind a low-rate, broad-based tax system that is fair, simple and efficient.

This was years ago, I think during the early [Ronald] Reagan years. I came up with a plan that everybody just pay $8.95 in taxes. Cheating would be allowed. But the incentive to cheat wouldn't be nearly as great if you only had to pay the $8.95. There were a few people who would have to pay hundreds of millions of dollars under this plan. I think it was Mark Goodson and Bill Todman, the guys who do the quiz shows. But almost everybody else would be off really cheap.

We need to simplify the tax code to reward Americans for working hard, investing, saving - and allow families to keep more of their own money.

The rationale for eliminating the alternative minimum tax is that such a backup system should not be necessary if the tax code is fundamentally fair and eliminates all the loopholes that made it possible for high-income taxpayers to escape taxation in the first place.

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.

Our 15 thousand page tax code is incomprehensible and unenforceable.

We had 90 percent rates, but nobody paid them. And so you had all these exemptions, exclusions, shelters, all this kind of stuff. And that's why most Americans are saying, 'Look, let's just be honest. Let's have lower rates, but everybody pays them.'

Taxes should be simple and fair... I'm not for increasing income taxes - if we even have an income tax.

President Bush says he now wants to simplify the tax code. Only those in the blue states will pay.

Everybody gets ticked off about GE paying no taxes. Look, we have a complicated, convoluted tax system. And only big corporations and wealthy individuals like Warren Buffett can take advantage of it. We need to simplify and flatten the code, get rid of all the loopholes.

Tax reform shouldn't add one penny to our deficit or to the tax bills of middle-class Americans.

We got government off the backs of the people of India, particularly off the backs of India's entrepreneurs. We introduced more competition, both internal competition and external competition. We simplified and rationalized the tax system. We made risk-taking much more attractive.