Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.

No one making less than $250,000 under Barack Obama’s plan will see one single penny of their tax raised, whether it’s their capital gains tax, their income tax, investment tax, any tax.

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

To tax the community for the advantage of a class is not protection: it is plunder.

When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that the old source is abandoned. It merely means that the politicians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had one before.

I will cut taxes – cut taxes – for 95 percent of all working families, because, in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle class.

There are only three ways to meet the unpaid bills of a nation. The first is taxation. The second is repudiation. The third is inflation.

If people want capital gains taxed more like the highest rate on income, that’s a good discussion. Maybe that’s the way to help close the deficit.

When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.

If you make any money, the government shoves you in the creek once a year with it in your pockets, and all that don’t get wet you can keep.

Fortunately for India, it has got a growing economy. If it is doing the right things with taxation and focusing on the right areas for human development, it is going to have no problem, over a period of time, taking care of its own needs.

I can make a firm pledge, under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.

In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another.

The people are hungry: It is because those in authority eat up too much in taxes.

In order to deal with all the medical cost demands and other challenges in the U.S., as we look to raise that revenue, the rich will have to pay slightly more. That’s quite clear.

I just think that – when a country needs more income and we do, we’re only taking in 15 percent of GDP, I mean, that – that – when a country needs more income, they should get it from the people that have it.

The reason we should do a carbon tax is because it’s the right thing to do. It’s economics 101, elementary stuff.

The problem with being an employee or self-employed is you pay the highest taxes.

Taxation is just a sophisticated way of demanding money with menaces.

It is a way to take people’s wealth from them without having to openly raise taxes. Inflation is the most universal tax of all.

We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.

To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.

And what’s interesting, and I don’t think a lot of Americans understand this fact, is that, one, most new jobs are created by small businesses; two, most small businesses pay tax at the individual income tax, or many small businesses pay tax there.

Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.

We don’t seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business?

For every benefit you receive a tax is levied.

Government always finds a need for whatever money it gets.

Note, besides, that it is no more immoral to directly rob citizens than to slip indirect taxes into the price of goods that they cannot do without.

If you believe that tax policy has nothing to do with the economy, then you’re pretty much like a rock, only dumber.

If anything, taxes for the lower and middle class and maybe even the upper middle class should even probably be cut further. But I think that people at the high end – people like myself – should be paying a lot more in taxes. We have it better than we’ve ever had it.

But let me perfectly clear, because I know you’ll hear the same old claims that rolling back these tax breaks means a massive tax increase on the American people: if your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime.

The problem is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that government spends too much.

Me and my dad are the biggest promoters of an estate tax in the US. It’s not a popular position.

You know people talk about federal money as if it falls from heaven. You know we thank heaven for it, but it came out of people’s pockets – and I’ve driven all over Washington, D.C., I cannot find the money tree.