# Quote — David Cay Johnston, Perfectly Legal

> After the Sixteenth Amendment... the federal government... enacted a regime to tax incomes, gifts and estates... with the explicit promise that the basic means of sustaining life would not be taxed. The original tax regime applied only to the economic elite, to... "surplus" incomes. ...[I]ncome from capital was taxed more heavily ...in the belief that it was morally offensive to take more from money earned by the sweat of one's brow ...

- Author: [David Cay Johnston](https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-cay-johnston.md)
- Book: [Perfectly Legal](https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-cay-johnston/perfectly-legal.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Cay_Johnston#Perfectly_Legal_(2005)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-cay-johnston/perfectly-legal/after-the-sixteenth

## More from this book

> Members of Congress routinely vote on tax bills that they have never read, much less understood even on a superficial level. Sanford J. Schlesinger... says that "there hasn't been a member of Congress with a comprehensive understanding of the laws since ..."

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-cay-johnston/perfectly-legal/members-of-congress.md)

> [L]ess than a century after its adoption, the tax system is being turned on its head. Since at least 1983 it has become the explicit, but unstated, policy... to let the richest Americans pay a smaller portion of their incomes in taxes and to defer more of their taxes... a stealth tax cut, while collecting more in taxes from... the middle class.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-cay-johnston/perfectly-legal/l-ess-than-a-century.md)

> In every place where there is no real tax system, such as Honduras or Afghanistan, there is no widespread wealth.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-cay-johnston/perfectly-legal/in-every-place.md)