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“Taxes are what we pay for civilized society,” Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. wrote in a 1927 opinion.
“The power to tax involves the power to destroy,” Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in an 1819 opinion.
Each of these venerated jurists is correct.
We all recognize that public security and education of the young, to mention the most obvious, necessitate that citizens pay into our Commonwealth and local treasuries. The other side of the taxation coin is the “power to destroy.”
If the General Assembly demands too much money from the fruits of the enterprise of Virginia citizens or overweighs the burden of taxation on one class of citizen or another, it will dampen or destroy businesses and force deep financial hardship on families and individuals.
Government must take from its citizens only what it needs, not what bureaucrats want; and it must do so in as balanced and equitable a manner as possible. That was a preamble to informing you about the Joint Subcommittee to Study Virginia's System of Taxation, to which Speaker Wilkins appointed me.
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