Bats have no bankers and they do not drink and cannot be arrested and pay no tax and, in general, bats have it made.

-Berryman,John originally John Allyn Smith
  'Dream Song No.63'.

Excise. A hateful tax levied upon commodities.

-Johnson, Samuel known as Dr Johnson
  A Dictionary of the English Language.

Given that the deepest problem with the US economy is slow productivity growth, it is difficult to argue for tax increasesthat might reduceincentives† Thereseemsto Kuhn be a public consensus that Donald Trump is the price of progress.

-Krugman, Paul R
  The Age of Diminished Expectations.

We can applaud the state lottery as a public subsidy of intelligence, for it yields public income that is calculated to lighten the tax burden of us prudent abstainers at the expense of the benighted masses of wishful thinkers.

-Quine,Willard Van Orman
  Quiddities,'Gambling'.

I wish the Government would put a tax on pianos for the incompetent. 794

-Sitwell, Dame Edith Louisa
Collected in Letters,1916^1964 (1970).

It gave me a great notion of the credit of our present government and administration, to find people press as eagerly to pay moneyas they would to receive it; and, at the same time, a due respect for that body of men who have found out so pleasing an expedient for carrying on the common cause, that they have turned a tax into a diversion.

-Stein, Gertrude
  On the first state lottery of1710. In theTatler, no.124, 24 Jan.

It is a maxim of cryptology that what one man can devise, another can unravel. This principle keeps armies of tax lawyers and accountants employed, but adds nothing to our national productivity.

-Wriston,Walter Bigelow
  Risk and Other Four-LettersWords.