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.

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

If people continue to feel like Democrats are looking after poor folks and Republicans are looking after rich folks and nobody is looking after me, then we don’t get a lot of stuff done. And the trend lines evidence the fact that folks have gotten squeezed. And obviously, 2007, 2008 really ripped open for people how vulnerable they were.

You can only choose between rich and poor. The middle class is gone.

Probably because I’m from a middle class family, I have that nature in me that I don’t get too excited with big things.

We’re a phenomenally snobby society, and it’s such a rich seam. The middle class is so funny: it’s the class I know best, and it’s the class where you find the most pretension, so that’s what makes the middle classes so funny.

‚Obama and Biden want to raise taxes by a trillion dollars.‘ Guess what? Yes, we do in one regard: We want to let that trillion dollar tax cut expire so the middle class doesn’t have to bear the burden of all that money going to the super-wealthy. That’s not a tax raise. That’s called fairness where I come from.

Instead of giving corporations a big tax cut, let’s give the middle class a real, permanent tax cut.

Unions did in fact build the middle class. And here’s what that did. That built the United States of America as we know it.

I believe – we all pay taxes. I’m happy to pay it, but I hate to have it abused, money wasted, no accountability. That’s going to bother you.

We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well.

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.

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.

Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.

The IRS! They’re like the Mafia, they can take anything they want!

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.

In the middle of a recession, where we’re just climbing out of it, where the economy -unemployment is still at 9.7 percent, the idea of raising taxes and reducing spending is a prescription for disaster.

In December, I agreed to extend the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans because it was the only way I could prevent a tax hike on middle-class Americans. But we cannot afford $1 trillion worth of tax cuts for every millionaire and billionaire in our society. We can’t afford it. And I refuse to renew them again.

You can choose a future where more Americans have the chance to gain the skills they need to compete, no matter how old they are or how much money they have. Education was the gateway to opportunity for me. It was the gateway for Michelle. And now more than ever, it is the gateway to a middle-class life.

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.

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

When Caroline Kennedy managed to say ‚you know‘ more than 200 times in an interview with the New York ‚Daily News,‘ and on 130 occasions while talking to ‚The New York Times‘ during her uninspired attempt to become a hereditary senator, she proved, among other things, that she was (a) middle-aged and (b) middle class.

I’m a warrior for the middle class.

Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.

I know why we’re strong. I know why we have held together; I know why we are united: it’s because there’s always been a growing middle class.

I go for all sharing the privileges of the government, who assist in bearing its burdens. Consequently, I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage, who pay taxes or bear arms (by no means excluding females).

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

The last thing you want to do is raise taxes in the middle of the recession because that would just suck up and take more demand out of the economy and put businesses in a further hole.

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.

You’re looking at a middle-class guy. I am who I am.

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.

Doing nothing while the middle class is hurting. That’s not leadership. Loose regulations and lax enforcement. That’s not leadership. That’s abandoning our middle class.

We can’t have special interests sitting shotgun. We gotta have middle class families up in front. We don’t mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back.

Greece has been, in many ways, a partially dysfunctional society. For example, the wealthy barely pay taxes… to an extent, that’s true elsewhere, including the United States, but it’s been pretty extreme in Greece.

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

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

Whereas it has long been known and declared that the poor have no right to the property of the rich, I wish it also to be known and declared that the rich have no right to the property of the poor.

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

For every benefit you receive a tax is levied.

I’m spending a year dead for tax reasons.

The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes.

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.

The answer to many of the domestic problems we face is not higher taxes and more spending. It is less waste, more results and greater freedom for the individual American to earn a rightful place in his own community – and for States and localities to address their own needs in their own ways, in the light of their own priorities.

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

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.

As president, Reagan worked very well with Democrats to do big things. It is true that he worked to reduce the size of government and cut federal taxes and he eliminated many regulations, but he also raised taxes when necessary.

Government always finds a need for whatever money it gets.

If you go back to 1800, everybody was poor. I mean everybody. The Industrial Revolution kicked in, and a lot of countries benefited, but by no means everyone.

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.

The income tax has made liars out of more Americans than golf.

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.

In fact, the best thing we could do on taxes for all Americans is to simplify the individual tax code. This will be a tough job, but members of both parties have expressed an interest in doing this, and I am prepared to join them.

The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax.

The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.

I didn’t pay my taxes for years.

It is to the middle-class we must look for the safety of England.

When a nation is over-reliant on one or two commodities like oil or precious minerals, corrupt government ministers and their dodgy associates hoard profits and taxes instead of properly allocating them to schools and hospitals.

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

You know, if you are kind of rich, the best thing is that you don’t have to think about money. The best thing you can buy with money is freedom, time. I don’t know how much I earn a year. I have no idea. I don’t know how much I pay in taxes.

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.

I can remember earning £5,000 a game playing for Hibs at the end of the Seventies. They let me commute from London, train on the Friday and play on Saturday. That lasted until my friends at the Inland Revenue decided to take two-thirds. That wasn’t very entertaining for me.