"Taxpayer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... until it takes five quart bottles to hold a gallon, so there has been a shrinkage of valuations until it has become common to tax a man for only three fourths or perhaps two thirds of what his property is worth in the market. This makes the rate higher, to be sure, but the individual taxpayer nevertheless seems to feel relieved by it. Allowing for this undervaluation, we may say that a man worth $50,000 commonly pays not less than $500 for his yearly taxes, or about one fifth of the annual income of the property. We thus begin to ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... Service nigger thinks himself a better man than "Tommy," and doesn't hesitate to tell you so. It would be instructive to know the name of the genius who fixed the scale of nigger wage at L 4 10s. per month, with rations. Fully half that sum could with ease have been saved the British taxpayer, and the nigger would have taken it with delight, and jumped at the chance of getting it. As a matter of fact, the nigger has had a huge picnic, and has been well paid for attending it. He has never been kept short of food. He has never had to march until his ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... broken when the British power expanded to the north. The upshot of these trespasses was the scene upon which every drama of South Africa rings down. Once more the purse was drawn from the pocket of the unhappy taxpayer, and a million or so was paid out to defray the expenses of the police force necessary to keep these treaty-breakers in order. Let this be borne in mind when we assess the moral and material damage done to the Transvaal by the ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Bill Mr. BONAR LAW exhibited a conciliatory disposition; and, indignantly disclaiming the character of a kill-joy, made several welcome concessions to the taxpayer. The late increase in the tobacco duty is to be halved, so that the modest smoker may hope to fill his pipe for a penny less per ounce. This hope, of course, is dependent upon the decision of ...
— Punch, Volume 153, July 11, 1917 - Or the London Charivari. • Various
... of taxation and trade. Since the heavy debt under which England was laboring had been largely incurred in the defense of America, nothing seemed more reasonable to them than the proposition that the colonies should help to bear the burden which fell so heavily upon the English taxpayer. The Sugar Act of 1764 was the result of this reasoning. There was no doubt about the purpose of this law, for it was set forth clearly in the title: "An act for granting certain duties in the British colonies and plantations in America ... for applying the ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... that we can sell fifty copies of 'Happiness and Hayseed' before Hallowe'en. Now I'm sure your sporting instinct will assist us by taking at least one copy. Andrew McGill is probably the greatest author in this State, and every taxpayer ought to possess his books. May I show you ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... Non-intervention, peace, restriction of armaments, retrenchment of expenditure, reduction of taxation, were the connected series of practical consequences. The money retrenched from wasteful military expenditure need not all be remitted to the taxpayer. A fraction of it devoted to education—free, secular, and universal—would do as much good as when spent on guns and ships it did harm. For education was necessary to raise the standard of intelligence, ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... each one brings all his credit to bear against assessments. "Your sympathetic heart," writes one of them to the intendant, "will never allow a father of my condition to be taxed for the vingtiemes rigidly like a father of low birth."[1219] On the other hand, as the taxpayer pays the capitation-tax at his actual residence, often far away from his estates, and no one having any knowledge of his personal income, he may pay whatever seems to him proper. There are no proceedings ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... undertaken for a special reason. It is to explain to the taxpayer just why so many of his dollars are going into the American effort to explore space, and to indicate what he can expect in return which is ...
— The Practical Values of Space Exploration • Committee on Science and Astronautics
... thought it a pity, on this account, that some of the plants, especially the zinnias and marigolds, were not left to go to seed. A little untidiness, in so good a cause, could hardly be taken amiss by even the most fastidious taxpayer. He replied that it would be of no use; we hadn't any birds now, and we shouldn't have any so long as the English sparrows were here to drive them away. But it would be of use, notwithstanding; and certainly it would afford a pleasure to many people to see flocks of goldfinches, red-poll linnets, ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... allowance or a pension whether the State which pays them receives compensation on this or on another head, and a recovery by the State out of indemnity receipts is just as much in relief of the general taxpayer as a contribution towards the general costs of the war would have been. But the main consideration is that it was too late to consider whether the pre-Armistice conditions were perfectly judicious and logical or to amend them; the only question at issue was whether ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... which, in my short service of two years with the Caledonian, seemed to me of the greatest moment, was that, after six months or so, I became a taxpayer! This was an event indeed. In the offices at Derby it was only, as a rule, middle-aged or old men who attained this proud distinction; and here was I, not yet twenty-two, with my salary raised to 100 pounds a year, paying income tax at the rate ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... persistently refused to give any information about himself was remanded at the Guildhall last week. He is thought to be a British taxpayer going ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... Jean Paul says, "There above is everything he can wish for here below." But if the Native of other days has been sold by the perfidy of his Dutch allies of the day, the British soldiers and British taxpayer of the present day have been deceived by "we don't know who". They fought and died and paid to unfurl the banner of freedom in this part of the globe, and the spectacle before us is the result. This must be what A. H. Keene referred to when he said, "The British public were also dumb, and with that ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... "the governor seems to have the unanimous support of the college professors and the New Yorkers who claim residence in Newport, Rhode Island; but I wonder what the taxpayer thinks." ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... 'you'll take parole, and go back to America and invent another Zigler, a trifle heavier in the working parts—I would. We've got more prisoners than we know what to do with as it is,' he says. 'You'll only be an additional expense to me as a taxpayer. Think of Schedule D,' ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... feudal rights over it, and in the last resort reappeared in official guise as one of an army of officials whose chief duty it was not so much to ensure justice, good government, or local improvement, as to screw more money out of the taxpayer. Chief of all these officials were the King's intendants, working under the authority of the Controleur-General ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... all this is nuts to the irresponsible journalists, to the manufacturers of powder, guns, and ships, and to politicians and diplomats out of employment; but it is hard on the taxpayer, who has no dividends from manufacturers of lethal weapons and ships, nor from newspapers, and no notoriety from the self-imposed jobs ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... language was invariably grammatical and precise and as carefully accented as might be expected of a man whose people never had very much use anyway for the consonant "r." As William Pitman Priest, Esq., citizen, taxpayer, and Confederate veteran he mishandled the king's English as though he had but small personal regard for the king ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... examining and recording the accounts had been performed by subordinate officials; but any question of difficulty which arose, any disputed point, whether between the sheriff and the state or between the sheriff and the taxpayer, must have been decided by the court itself, though probably by the smaller rather than by the larger body. Certainly it is the small curia regis which has supervision of the matter when we get our first ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... or pleasure, both deadening without some diviner spark, by a sustained enthusiasm that can hardly be imagined now. There were, indeed, some who asked what was all this to them? What were the 'extraneous Austrian Emperor,' or the 'old chimera of a Pope' (Carlyle's designations) to the British taxpayer? Some there were in England who were deeply attached still to the 'Great Hinge on which Europe depended,' and even to the most clement Spanish Bourbons of Naples, about whom strangely beautiful things are to be read in old numbers of the Quarterly Review. But on the whole, English men and ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... country proposed to give to the weaker, from the Treasury to which both contributed, was the remission of one-third of this debt. A blunder in foreign policy, the escapade of an ambitious minister in India or Africa, has cost the British taxpayer more in a month than he spent to save millions of fellow-subjects beyond the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... begin to see a little fun ahead in lettin' him try it—which I don't see thess how they could 'a' hindered him, an' it a free school, an' me a taxpayer. But they all seemed to be in a pretty good humor by this time, an' when Sonny put it to vote, why, they voted unanymous to let him try it. An' all o' them unanymous votes wasn't, to say, friendly, neither. ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... the bread really comes not from the idler but from the workers who pay his rents; the idler is at most the channel of distribution. The munificence of monarchs who generously lavish the money of the taxpayer is a familiar case of the same fallacy. This is the illusion of the Irish peasant whose respect for the spendthrift "gentleman" and contempt for the frugal "sneak" Mr. Greg honours with a place among the serious elements of an economical and ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... I was goin' over to wait around till the train come in, drove me back like I was a cow. He said it didn't make no difference how much business I had at the depot, it would have to wait till the train was gone. When a citizen and a taxpayer of this town can't even cross the road like a shanghai rooster, things is comin' to a ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... paragraph into the motion, Mr. Moore, making it a fifty-dollar fine for any taxpayer, or tenant, who puts rubbish out on the curb on any other day save the two mentioned in the main ordinance," Janice whispered to the selectman; "otherwise you will set a bad precedent with your Clean-Up Day, instead of doing ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... for Mr. Knight did not always contrive to reach his public. The letters were signed with pseudonyms, such as A British Citizen, Fiat Justitia, Audi Alteram Partem, Indignant, Disgusted, One Who Knows, One Who Would Like to Know, Ratepayer, Taxpayer, Puzzled, and Pro Bono Publico—especially Pro Bono Publico. Two letters, to a trade periodical, were signed A Draper's Manager of Ten Years' Standing, and one, to the Clerkenwell News, bore ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... unequal combat between the tax-eater and the taxpayer, and we have the perennial conflict between the different groups of taxpayers, each trying to shift the burden onto the other, not to speak of that very considerable company who, for profit, cultivate vice as the farmer cultivates his crops. All conscious and deliberate injustice is proof ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan |
