27 January—Some Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are talking yet again (or still) about what they’re calling a “fair tax.” This time it’s a tax on consumption instead of income, i.e., a 30 percent sales tax.

Fair tax has at various times referred to a consumption tax of indeterminate size on indeterminate goods and services, a single-rate flat income tax, as well as various iterations of so-called progressive income tax. Proponents of any given tax are the ones who invariably call it fair, while everybody else calls it unfair.

Rest assured that a fair tax of any sort is never going to happen. Anywhere. Because the only unequivocally fair tax is no tax at all. As Winston Churchill opined, “There is no such thing as a good tax.” Let alone a fair tax. While you’re in the mood, then, here are lots of other noteworthy observations on taxes, in no particular order:

Snoopy: “Dear IRS, I am writing to you to cancel my subscription. Please remove my name from your mailing list.”

Senator Russell B. Long: “A tax loophole is something that benefits the other guy. If it benefits you, it is tax reform.”

Will Rogers: “Be thankful we’re not getting all the government we’re paying for.”

Albert Bushnell Hart (historian; 1883 PhD thesis: The Coercive Powers of the Government of the United States of America): “Taxation is the price which civilized communities pay for the opportunity of remaining civilized.”

Mark Twain: “What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin.”

Anonymous: “The best things in life are free, but sooner or later the government will find a way to tax them.”

Steve Forbes: “The politicians say ‘we’ can’t afford a tax cut. Maybe we can’t afford the politicians.”

Albert Camus: “It is no more immoral to directly rob citizens than to slip indirect taxes into the price of goods that they cannot do without.” [Take that, Ned!]

Albert Einstein: “The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.”

Senator Barry Goldwater: “The income tax created more criminals than any other single act of government.”

Calvin Coolidge: “Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery.” [Take that BOLBOWAB!]

Erving Goffman (sociologist): “Man is not like other animals in the ways that are really significant: animals have instincts, we have taxes.”

Evan Esar (humorist): “Some taxpayers close their eyes, some stop their ears, some shut their mouths, but all pay through the nose.”

Frederick the Great: “No government can exist without taxation. This money must necessarily be levied on the people; and the grand art consists of levying so as not to oppress.” [That would make it a fair tax—and therefore impossible.]

Benjamin Franklin: “Our new Constitution is now established, everything seems to promise it will be durable; but, in this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes.”

Anonymous: “A person doesn’t know how much he has to be thankful for until he has to pay taxes on it.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt: “Taxation according to income is the most effective instrument yet devised to obtain just contribution from those best able to bear it and to avoid placing onerous burdens upon the mass of our people.”

Karl Marx: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” [I couldn’t resist this juxtaposition. But FDR was not a communist.]

Mark Cuban, echoing Churchill: “There are no good taxes.”

Mark Cuban, anyway: “While some people might find it distasteful to pay taxes, I don’t. I find it patriotic.” [I couldn’t resist Cuban on Cuban either. I wonder how much he pays his accountants to make him unpatriotic.]

Anonymous: “A fine is a tax for doing something wrong. A tax is a fine for doing something right.”

Leona Helmsley: “We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.”

John Marshall (Chief Justice of the United States): “The power to tax is the power to destroy.”

Andrew Cuomo: “New York State is upside down and backwards; high taxes and low performance.” [Ditto, Connecticut! In spades!]

John Maynard Keynes (economist): “The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that carries any reward.”

Winston S. Churchill: “For a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.”

Will Rogers: “The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.”

Anonymous: “People who complain about taxes can be divided into two classes: men and women.”

Thomas Paine: “What at first was plunder assumed the softer name of revenue.”

Ronald Reagan: “The taxpayer—that’s someone who works for the federal government but doesn’t have to take the civil service examination.”

Laurence J. Peter (satirist, educator): “America is a land of taxation that was founded to avoid taxation.”

Milton Friedman: “We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork.”

Peg Bracken: “Why does a slight tax increase cost you two hundred dollars and a substantial tax cut save you thirty cents?”

Robert Heinlein: “Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors . . . and miss.”

Ronald Reagan: “The government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”

Thomas Jefferson: “To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”

Gerald Barzan (percipient wit): “Taxation with representation ain’t so hot either.”