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

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.

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

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

The only way you can beat the lawyers is to die with nothing.

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.

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.

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

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

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

A little over 5% of the world’s population produces almost 29% of the world’s goods and services.

Now, anybody who thinks that we can move this economy forward with just a few folks at the top doing well, hoping that it’s going to trickle down to working people who are running faster and faster just to keep up, you’ll never see it.

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

This is the moment when we must build on the wealth that open markets have created, and share its benefits more equitably. Trade has been a cornerstone of our growth and global development. But we will not be able to sustain this growth if it favors the few, and not the many.

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

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.

The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples‘ money.

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

This 90/10 rule holds true in almost anything financial. Take the game of golf, for example. Ten percent of the professional golfers make 90 percent of the money.

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.

I don’t want you to apologize for being rich; I want you to acknowledge that in America, we all should have to pay our fair share.

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

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.

I think when you spread the wealth around it’s good for everybody.

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.

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.

The Lord commonly gives riches to foolish people, to whom he gives nothing else.

Capital as such is not evil; it is its wrong use that is evil. Capital in some form or other will always be needed.

The capitalist system is about taking from the Earth and from the other great commodity, labour. What’s happening with this system is that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and the only way out of it is supposed to be growth. But growth is debt. It’s going to make the situation worse.

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.

Capitalism has proven to be the only system that works, but the problem with capitalism is that extreme wealth ends up in the hands of a few people.

A first-generation fortune is the most likely to be given away, but once a fortune is inherited it’s less likely that a very high percentage will go back to society.

Black people in America, people from the struggle, immigrants, it’s no generational wealth that we are attached to, so we are tasked to create – in one generation – closing the gap. That’s why we so Doomsday about getting to the check: ‚cause it’s life or death for real.

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

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.

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.

Governments are not representative. They have their own power, serving segments of the population that are dominant and rich.

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

Income inequity has to be addressed.

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 can’t leave people in abject poverty, so we need to raise the standard of living for 80% of the world’s people, while bringing it down considerably for the 20% who are destroying our natural resources.

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.

For every benefit you receive a tax is levied.

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.

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.

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

Government always finds a need for whatever money it gets.

There certainly is a case to be made that taxes should be more progressive.

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

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 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.

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

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

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.