The income tax created more criminals than any other single act of government.

Goldwater’s line is a libertarian-leaning critique of the federal income tax as a system that turns ordinary citizens into lawbreakers. The claim is less about violent crime than about widespread technical illegality: complex rules, withholding, deductions, and reporting requirements make inadvertent errors common and deliberate evasion tempting. By framing taxpayers as “criminals,” the quote argues that the tax code’s breadth and complexity expand the state’s coercive reach and normalize selective enforcement. It also reflects Goldwater’s broader mid‑century conservative emphasis on limited government and skepticism toward administrative regulation, suggesting that policy design can manufacture noncompliance on a mass scale.