Here's the Daily Quotes Log to date.


Cryptograms!
Do you like cryptograms? We've got thousands!

Authors
Indexed quotes by Author or Speaker.

Categories
Browse quotes by category or select from the list below.

Intelligence Quotes
Intention Quotes
Intimidation Quotes
Intolerance Quotes
Invention Quotes
Iraq Quotes
IRS Quotes
	9th Circuit Court	... we conclude that the [Federal] Reserve Banks are not federal ... but are independent privately owned and locally controlled corporations... without day to day direction from the federal government.
	Fisher Ames	Liberty has never lasted long in a democracy, nor has it ever ended in anything better than despotism.
	Tom Anderson	The Original Sin which brought us to the brink of bankruptcy and dictatorship was the Federal Income Tax Amendment and its illegitimate child, Federal Aid.
	T. Coleman Andrews	I don't like the income tax. Every time we talk about these taxes we get around to the idea of 'from each according to his capacity and to each according to his needs'. That's socialism. It's written into the Communist Manifesto. Maybe we ought to see that every person who gets a tax return receives a copy of the Communist Manifesto with it so he can see what's happening to him.
	Dwight E. Avis	Let me point this out now. Your income tax is 100 percent voluntary tax, and your liquor tax is 100 percent enforced tax. Now, the situation is as different as night and day. Consequently, your same rules just will not apply...
	Joseph Banister	The Internal Revenue Service is everything the so-called tax protesters said it was; nonresponsive, unable to withstand scrutiny, tyrannical, and oblivious to the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution.
	Bernard Baruch	Nothing did more to spur the boom in stocks than the decision made by the New York Federal Reserve bank, in the spring of 1927, to cut the rediscount rate. Benjamin Strong, Governor of the bank, was chief advocate of this unwise measure, which was taken largely at the behest of Montagu Norman of the Bank of England....At the time of the Banks action I warned of its consequences....I felt that sooner or later the market had to break.
	Frederic Bastiat	The war against illegal plunder has been fought since the beginning of the world. But how is... legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish this law without delay ... If such a law is not abolished immediately it will spread, multiply and develop into a system.
	Frederic Bastiat	Men naturally rebel against the injustice of which they are victims. Thus, when plunder is organized by law for the profit of those who make the law, all the plundered classes try somehow to enter -- by peaceful or revolutionary means -- into the making of laws. According to their degree of enlightenment, these plundered classes may propose one of two entirely different purposes when they attempt to attain political power: Either they may wish to stop lawful plunder, or they may wish to share in it.
	Frederic Bastiat	Thus, if there exists a law which sanctions slavery or monopoly, oppression or robbery, in any form whatever, it must not even be mentioned. For how can it be mentioned without damaging the respect which it inspires? Still further, morality and political economy must be taught from the point of view of this law; from the supposition that it must be a just law merely because it is a law. Another effect of this tragic perversion of the law is that it gives an exaggerated importance to political passions and conflicts, and to politics in general.
	Henry Bellmon	In a recent conversation with an official at the Internal Revenue Service, I was amazed when he told me that 'If the taxpayers of this country ever discover that the IRS operates on 90% bluff the entire system will collapse' .
	Justice Hugo L. Black	The United States has a system of taxation by confession.
	David Boaz	Power always corrupts, and the power of government to tell people how to live their lives or to transfer money from those who earn it to others is always a temptation to corruption. Taxes and regulations reduce people’s incentive to produce wealth, and government transfer programs reduce people’s incentive to work, to save, and to help family and friends in case of sickness, disability, or retirement. ...[I]t is nonetheless clear that government enterprises are less efficient, less innovative, and more wasteful than private firms.... [C]ompare what it’s like to call American Express versus the IRS to correct problems. Or compare a private apartment building with public housing.
	Karl Borden	Social Security is an unfunded pay-as-you-go system, fundamentally flawed and analogous in design to illegal pyramid schemes. Government accounting creates the illusion of a trust fund, but in fact, excess receipts are spent immediately. The government’s own actuaries predict the system will be bankrupt by 2030, but Social Security could face financial crisis as early as 2014. Moreover, Social Security’s relatively poor rate of return makes the program an increasingly worse investment for today’s young worker. ... The system design itself is fundamentally flawed and cannot be repaired. It must instead be replaced by one derived from free markets and operated by free citizenry making individual economic decisions in their own self-interest. ... Reform is long overdue. If we fail to act soon, our children will either inherit a bankrupt system or be forced to pay an impossibly high level of taxes. Only private pensions with individual property rights to accumulate fund balances can create a secure pension system. Chile, which privatized its system in 1981, provides evidence of such a system’s effectiveness.
	Boston Federal Reserve Bank	When you or I write a check there must be sufficient funds in our account to cover that check, but when the Federal Reserve writes a check, it is creating money.
	James Bovard	Its contempt for citizens ... is so routine, and so unlimited, that the agency has become a kind of Frankenstein, running wild and terrorizing Americans at will. The IRS hypocritically requires mistake-free returns when its own books are in shambles. It demands exorbitant sums of money without regard to the accuracy of its claims. It doesn’t hesitate to use every possible maneuver to get what it wants, sometimes destroying businesses -- and lives -- in the process.
	James Bovard	However accurate or inaccurate the agency’s numbers may be, tax law explicitly presumes that the IRS is always right -- and implicitly presumes that the taxpayer is always wrong -- in any dispute with the government. In many cases, the IRS introduces no evidence whatsoever of its charges; it merely asserts that a taxpayer had a certain amount of unreported income and therefore owes a proportionate amount in taxes, plus interest and penalties.
	Charles A. Bowsher	This [audit] was made extremely difficult because [IRS] existing Systems were not designed to provide reliable financial information... on their operations.
	Keith Bradsher	In a small Swiss city sits an international organization so obscure and secretive....Control of the institution, the Bank for International Settlements, lies with some of the world's most powerful and least visible men: the heads of 32 central banks, officials able to shift billions of dollars and alter the course of economies at the stroke of a pen.
	Richard Evelyn Byrd, Sr.	A hand from Washington will be stretched out and placed upon every man’s business; the eye of the Federal inspector will be in every man’s counting house. The law will of necessity have inquisitorial features, it will provide penalties. It will create a complicated machinery. Under it businessmen will be hauled into courts distant from their homes. Heavy fines imposed by distant and unfamiliar tribunals will constantly menace the taxpayer. An army of Federal inspectors, spies and detectives will descend upon the state. They will compel men of business to show their books and disclose the secrets of their affairs. They will dictate forms of bookkeeping. They will require statements and affidavits. On the one hand the inspector can blackmail the taxpayer and on the other, he can profit by selling his secret to his competitor.
	Mortimer Caplin	Our tax system is based on individual self-assessment and voluntary compliance.
	William Cash	Considering that senior officials at the Internal Revenue Service are fully aware of the fact that there is no law currently in existence making a U.S. citizen liable for or required to pay either the income tax or the social security employment tax, only a truly generous citizen would, upon discovering this, continue to voluntarily donate these taxes to the government by allowing them to be withheld from his paycheck on a 100% voluntary W-4 withholding agreement. But, then again, the IRS would be dead in the water without the "voluntary (and docile) compliance" of employers and employees and has said so all along.
	Judge Walter Joseph Cummings Jr.	Only the rare taxpayer would be likely to know that he could refuse to produce his records to IRS agents... Who would believe the ironic truth that the cooperative taxpayer fares much worse than the individual who relies upon his constitutional rights.
	John C. Danforth	I have never seen more senators express discontent with their jobs. ... I think the major cause is that, deep down in our hearts, we have been accomplices to doing something terrible and unforgivable to this wonderful country. Deep down in our hearts, we know that we have bankrupted America and that we have given our children a legacy of bankruptcy. ... We have defrauded our country to get ourselves elected.
	Marriner Stoddard Eccles	That is what our money system is. If there were no debts in our money system, there wouldn't be any money.
	W. Vaughn Ellsworth	Pity the poor, wretched, timid soul, too faint hearted to resist his oppressors. He sings the songs of the damned, 'I cannot resist, I have too much to lose, they might take my property or confiscate my earnings, what would my family do, how would they survive?' He hides behind pretended family responsibility, failing to see that the most glorious legacy that we can bequeath to our posterity is liberty!
	Kenneth Gerbino	Historically, the United States has been a hard money country. Only [since 1913] has the United States operated on a fiat money system. During this period, paper money has depreciated over 87%. During the preceding 140 year period, the hard currency of the United States had actually maintained its value. Wholesale prices in 1913... were the same as in 1787.
	Senator Carter Glass	Is there any reason why the American people should be taxed to guarantee the debts of banks, any more than they should be taxed to guarantee the debts of other institutions, including merchants, the industries, and the mills of the country?
	Alan Greenspan	As long as we issue fiat currency, I see no alternative to a legal tender law.
	G. Edward Griffin	No one in America fully understands the constantly changing Internal Revenue Code. Agents of the IRS do not, judges do not, congressmen do not, and most assuredly taxpayers do not.
	Martin Gross	The wages of the average American worker, after inflation and taxes, have decreased 17% since 1973, the only Western industrial nation to so suffer.
	George Hansen	The IRS is an extraordinary example of the end justifying the means. The means of this agency is growth. It is interesting that the revenue officers within the IRS refer to taxpayers as 'inventory'. The IRS embodies the political realities of the selfish human desire to dominate others. Thus the end of this gigantic pretense of officialdom is power, pure and simple. The meek may inherit the earth, but they will never receive a promotion in an agency where efficiency is measured by the number of seizures of taxpayers' property and by the number of citizens and businesses driven into bankruptcy.
	George V. Hansen	Only the IRS can attach 100% of a tax debtor's wages and/or property.<br/> Only the IRS can invade the privacy of a citizen without court process of any kind.<br/> Only the IRS can seize property without a court order.<br/> Only the IRS can force a citizen to try his case in a special court governed by the IRS.<br/> Only the IRS can compel the production of documents, records, and other materials without a court case being in existence.<br/> Only the IRS can with impunity publish the details of a citizens debt.<br/> Only the IRS can legally, without a court order, subject citizens to electronic surveillance.<br/> Only the IRS can force waiver of statute of limitations and other citizen's rights through the threat of Arbitrary assesment.<br/> Only the IRS uses extralegal coercion. Threats to witnesses to examine their taxes regularly produces whatever evidence the IRS dictates.<br/> Only the IRS is free to violate a written agreement with a citizen.<br/> Only the IRS uses reprisals against citizen and public officials alike.<br/> Only the IRS can take property on the basis of conjecture.<br/> Only the IRS is free to maintain lists of citizen guilty of no crime for the purpose of harassing and monitoring them.<br/> Only the IRS envelops all citizens.<br/> Only the IRS publicly admits that it's purpose is to instill fear in the citizenry as a technique of performing it's function.
	Dorcas Hardy	There is no prospect that today's younger workers will receive all the Social Security and Medicare benefits currently promised them.
	Jacob G. Hornberger	Every day, IRS agents levy liens on homes, bank accounts, and businesses; they confiscate cars, furniture, boats, and other personal property without the constitutional protections of due notice, hearing, and due process. If a person forcibly resists, government agents kill him for “resisting arrest.”
	Jacob G. Hornberger	The biggest threat to the American people today lies with the United States government. ... [T]he long-term solution is to dismantle, not reform, the iron fist of the welfare state and the controlled economy. This includes the end (not the reform) of the IRS, the DEA, the BATF, the SEC, the FDA, HUD, the departments of HHS, Labor, Agriculture, and energy, and every other agency that takes money from some and gives it to others or interferes with peaceful behavior.
	Jacob G. Hornberger	Contrary to everything our rulers tell us, and everything that our schoolteachers are teaching the children of this nation, the biggest threat to the lives and well-being of the American people lies not with some foreign government. The biggest threat to the American people today lies with the United States government. And while gun ownership stands as a barrier to potential, Nazi-like behavior, the long-term solution is to dismantle, not reform, the iron fist of the welfare state and the controlled economy. This includes the end (not the reform) of the IRS, the DEA, the BATF, the SEC, the FDA, HUD, the departments of HHS, Labor, Agriculture, and Energy, and every other agency that takes money from some and gives it to others or interferes with peaceful behavior. It entails the repeal of all laws that permit such conduct. And it means the privatization of most of the bureaucrats who work for the U.S. government.
	Internal Revenue Service Manual	Some techniques can be used only in connection with a full-scale program due to the nature of the tax situation and the need to avoid unnecessary taxpayer reaction. An example would be income tax returns compliance efforts aimed at the non-business taxpayer.
	Internal Revenue Service Manual	The purpose of the IRS is to collect the proper amount of tax revenues at the least cost to the public, and in a manner that warrants the highest degree of public confidence in our integrity, efficiency and fairness. To achieve that purpose, we will encourage and achieve the highest possible degree of voluntary compliance in accordance with the tax laws and regulations...
	Andrew Jackson	If Congress has the right under the Constitution to issue paper money, it was given to be used by themselves, not to be delegated to individuals or corporations.
	Andrew Jackson	You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the grace of the Eternal God, will rout you out.
	Thomas Jefferson	The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors
	Thomas Jefferson	I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground that 'all powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are preserved to the states or to the people.' ... To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition. The incorporation of a bank, and the powers assumed by this bill (chartering the first Bank of the United States), have not, been delegated to the United States by the Constitution.
	Thomas Jefferson	Fear can only prevail when victims are ignorant of the facts.
	Peter Kershaw	The Founding Fathers of this great land had no difficulty whatsoever understanding the agenda of bankers, and they frequently referred to them and their kind as, quote, 'friends of paper money.' They hated the Bank of England, in particular, and felt that even were we successful in winning our independence from England and King George, we could never truly be a nation of freemen, unless we had an honest money system. Through ignorance, but moreover, because of apathy, a small, but wealthy, clique of power brokers have robbed us of our Rights and Liberties, and we are being raped of our wealth. We are paying the price for the near-comatose levels of complacency by our parents, and only God knows what might become of our children, should we not work diligently to shake this country from its slumber! Many a nation has lost its freedom at the end of a gun barrel, but here in America, we just decided to hand it over voluntarily. Worse yet, we paid for the tyranny and usurpation out of our own pockets with "voluntary" tax contributions and the use of a debt-laden fiat currency!
	John Maynard Keynes	By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.
	John Maynard Keynes	If, however, a government refrains from regulations and allows matters to take their course, essential commodities soon attain a level of price out of the reach of all but the rich, the worthlessness of the money becomes apparent, and the fraud upon the public can be concealed no longer.
	Abraham Lincoln	... the privilege of creating and issuing money... is the government's greatest creative opportunity... [saving] the taxpayers immense sums of money...
	Senator Edward V. Long	The IRS has become morally corrupted by the enormous power which we in Congress have unwisely entrusted to it. Too often it acts like a Gestapo preying upon defenseless citizens.
	Gary Makovski	If no information or return is filed, [the] Internal Revenue Service cannot assess you.
	Karl Marx	Democracy is a form of government that cannot long survive, for as soon as the people learn that they have a voice in the fiscal policies of the government, they will move to vote for themselves all the money in the treasury, and bankrupt the nation.
	Louis McFadden	Some people think the Federal Reserve Banks are US government institutions. They are not... they are private credit monopolies which prey upon the people of the US for the benefit of themselves and their foreign and domestic swindlers, and rich and predatory money lenders. The sack of the United States by the Fed is the greatest crime in history. Every effort has been made by the Fed to conceal its powers, but the truth is the Fed has usurped the government. It controls everything here and it controls all our foreign relations. It makes and breaks governments at will.
	Louis McFadden	The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is eager to enter into close relationship with the Bank for International Settlements.... The conclusion is impossible to escape that the State and Treasury Departments are willing to pool the banking system of Europe and America, setting up a world financial power independent of and above the Government of the United States.... The United States under present conditions will be transformed from the most active of manufacturing nations into a consuming and importing nation with a balance of trade against it.
	Louis McFadden	(The Great Depression resulting from the Stock Market crash) was not accidental. It was a carefully contrived occurrence....The international bankers sought to bring about a condition of despair here so they might emerge as rulers of us all.
	Stephen Moore	[T]he income tax is incompatible with a free society. The IRS routinely intrudes on our basic civil liberties and privacy rights -- and its intrusions are getting worse all the time. I want an America where it is no longer the government's business how much money you make and what you do with it.
	Gustavus Myers	Under the surface, the Rothschilds long had a powerful influence in dictating American financial laws. The law records show that they were powers in the old Bank of the United States [abolished by Andrew Jackson].
	Mark Nestmann	Gold is still the ultimate store of wealth. It's the world's only true money. And there isn't much of it to go around. All of it ever mined would fit into a small building - a 56 foot cube. The annual world production would fit into a 14 foot cube, roughly the size of an ordinary living room. If each Chinese citizen were to buy just one ounce, it would take up the annual supply for the next 200 years.
	New York Times	[The Income Tax is] a vicious, inequitable, unpopular, impolitic and socialist act.
	Dr. Ron Paul	The theory of the IRS is rather repugnant to me because the assumption is made that I, the government, owns 100% of your income and I permit you to keep 5%, 10% or 20%. You're vulnerable, you've sold out. The government can take 80% if they want, which they did at one time.
	Shirley Peterson	... the key question is: can we define 'income' in a fair and reasonably straightforward manner? Unfortunately we have not yet succeeded in doing so.
	Daniel Pilla	Congress has doubled the IRS budget over the past 10 years -- making that agency one of the fastest growing non-entitlement programs. It has increased its employment by 20 percent. The IRS’s powers to investigate and examine taxpayers transcend those of any other law enforcement agency. Virtually all of the constitutional rights regarding search and seizure, due process, and jury trial simply do not apply to the IRS.
	Santo Presti	Fear is the key element for the IRS in achieving its mission. Without fear, the IRS would have a difficult time maintaining our so-called system of voluntary compliance ...
	Ronald Reagan	Our federal tax system is, in short, utterly impossible, utterly unjust and completely counterproductive, [it] reeks with injustice and is fundamentally un-American... it has earned a rebellion and it's time we rebelled.
	Dr. Lawrence W. Reed	After the 16th Amendment was ratified, an income tax was imposed starting in 1913 with rates ranging from 1 percent to 7 percent with the top rate applying only to incomes in excess of $500,000. By 1916 that top rate had risen to 15 percent, on income in excess of $2,000,000. The top rate exceeded 90 percent at its peak in the early 1950s. The first 1040 form -- instructions and all -- took up only four pages. Today there are some 4,000 pages of tax forms and instructions. American workers and business are forced to spend more than 5.4 billion man-hours every year figuring out their taxes. Since those hours could be put to a more productive use, and almost surely would be in the absence of today’s incomprehensible tax code, the result is a large dead-weight output loss of some $200 billion each year. ... The IRS now has more enforcement personnel than the EPA, BATF, OSHA, FDA, and DEA combined. With its 115,000-man workforce, it has the power to search the property and financial documents of American citizens without a search warrant and to seize property from American citizens without a trial. It routinely does both. Economist James L. Payne has written a most revealing analysis of the IRS, a 1993 book entitled Costly Returns. He arrives at a stunning conclusion, the total cost to collect our federal taxes, including the effects on the economy as a whole adds up to an amazing 65 percent of all the tax dollars received annually. The U.S. tax system, says Payne, has produced hundreds of thousands of victims of erroneous IRS penalties, liens, levies, and tax advice. In answering taxpayer questions, for example, the IRS telephone information service has in previous years given about one-third of all callers -- as many as 8.5 million Americans -- the wrong answers to their questions. A 1987 General Accounting Office study found that 47 percent of a random sample of IRS correspondence -- including demands for payments -- contained errors. Incredibly a GAO audit of the IRS in 1993 found widespread evidence of financial malfeasance and gross negligence at the agency. The IRS could not account for 64 percent of its congressional appropriation!
	Ralph Reiland	It ain’t over on April 15! If you stop, for example, for a $10 pizza on Thursday night to celebrate being done with the IRS for another year, the taxman will be right there to grab a slice or two. On top of paying the sales tax, you’ll also be picking up a major chunk of what the government charges the pizza shop owner for local property taxes, unemployment insurance taxes, federal payroll taxes, federal and state and local income taxes, and worker’s compensation taxes. Altogether, according to a study by the Americans for Tax Reform, that comes to $3.80 on a $10 pizza for the omnipresent taxman. If you pick up a Bud six-pack to go with the pizza, there’s another 43 cents of each beer dollar that goes straight to the taxman for excise taxes, income taxes, property taxes, etc. For something stronger, say Jack Daniels, the taxman’s share is $7.20, on average, out of every $10. Go lighter and just drink Pepsi and it’s 35 percent of what you pay that goes for taxes at all levels. Add some Marlboros and its 75 percent of the retail price that’s funneled directly into the state’s coffers. Get home and hit the light switch and another $26 out of every $100 on the electric bill goes for government rather than electricity. If you’re flying the next day, the taxman is up early and waiting at the aiport, pocketing $40 on every $100 airline ticket. And he’s there in the hotel lobby when you land, snatching $43 on every $100 of the hotel bill. Go out to dinner and it’s another $28 of every $100 of the tab that ends up with the government rather than with the restaurant, the farmers, truckers and everyone else who worked together to produce the meal.
	Edgar Wallace Robinson	In 1883, a small group of Socialists met in London, announcing their intentions of converting the British economic system from capitalism to socialism. This group chose the name 'Fabian Society.' One of the leading members of the Fabian Society, author George Bernard Shaw, perhaps summed it up best when he said, quote: '... Socialism means equality of income or nothing... under socialism you would not be allowed to be poor. You would be forcibly fed, clothed, lodged, taught, and employed whether you like it or not. If it were discovered that you had not character enough to be worth all this trouble, you might possibly be executed in a kindly manner; but whilst you were permitted to live you would have to live well.'
	Art Rolnick	We make money the old fashioned way. We print it.
	Dr. Mary J. Ruwart	In 1847, Marx and Engels proposed ten steps to convert the Western nations to Communist countries without firing a shot. Most of these ideas have been successfully implemented in our own country with little, if any, resistance! ... One of the ten steps called for "centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly" just like our own Federal Reserve! ... Another of the ten steps called for instituting "a heavy progressive or graduated income tax" just like our own federal income tax! ... Another step proposed by Marx and Engels was "abolition of all right of inheritance," which we come ever closer to as inheritance taxes increase. Taking wealth at gunpoint, if necessary that one person has created and given to another person is theft. Whether the wealth creator is alive or dead, the act and the impact are the same. Another step was "free education for all children in public schools." Although our country still has many private schools in addition to the public ones, the content of both is dictated by aggression-through-government, to teach aggression. Marx and Engels also recommended the "extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state." In the past century, more and more services have become exclusive, subsidized government monopolies (e.g., garbage collection, water distribution, mass transit, etc.). As a result, we pay twice as much for lower quality service! Marx also called for the "centralization of the means of communications and transport in the hands of the state." Television and radio stations are licensed by the Federal Communications Commission. A station that does not pursue programming considered "in the public interest" is stopped at gunpoint, if necessary from further broadcast. ... Radio stations have an elite ownership as well. Those who benefit from aggression-through-government have little incentive to tell the public that licensing is a tool of the rich! ... Another of the ten steps calls for "confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels" ... [O]ur law enforcement agents can seize the wealth of anyone suspected of drug crimes without a trial! [T]he Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has also been seizing the assets of taxpayers without a trial if the IRS thinks they might have underpaid their taxes! The wealth we have created can be taken from us at gunpoint, if necessary without a formal accusation or a chance to defend ourselves! ... In addition, Marx and Engels called for "abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes." In other words, land would not be privately owned. No homesteading would be permitted. Our federal and local governments have title to 42% of the land mass of the United States. Most of the remaining land is under government control as well. For example, today's homeowners can pay off their mortgages, but must still pay property taxes to the local government. If they stop payments, their property is taken from them. They are, in essence, renting their home from the local government.