Arthur Laffer Quotes

There are 11 states in the United States that in the last 50 years instituted an income tax. So I looked at each of those 11 states over the last 50 years, and I took their current economic metrics and their metrics for the five years before they put in the progressive income tax... Every single state that introduced a progressive income tax has declined as an overall share of the U.S. economy.

I don't support any increase in income tax rates.

I have continuously said that, at the very minimum, the Bush tax cuts for income under $250,000 should be extended.

Tax rates should never be raised in some brackets without being raised in all brackets.

Many states rely on sales tax as their principle source of revenue and do not have a State income tax.

Now, I do think when we move into 2012 and '13 when, presumably, the economy is on firmer ground, I would allow the tax rates for upper-income individuals to revert back to where they were before the cuts in the 1990s. I think at that point it makes perfect sense.

If Republicans are correct that lower rates spur economic growth, then lower rates on all income - made possible in part by raising capital-gains rates - should bolster economic growth across the economy.

If we want to jack up the tax rates on the really rich, the amounts of money that would bring in are trivial compared to jacking up rates on the middle class.

I support a progressive state income tax.

Income earned by the sweat of your brow should be taxed at the lowest rates, not the highest. Capital gains should be taxed at a higher rate.

If you look at the performance of the zero-income-tax-rate states and the highest-income-tax-rate states, I believe a large amount of their difference is due to taxes. Not only is it true of the last decade, but I took these numbers back 50 years. And, there's not one year in the last 50 where the zero-income-tax-rate states have not outperformed the highest-income-tax-rate states.

Any discuss about taxes ends up being, are you raising them or lowering them, as the opposed to the question I ask - are we raising them for high income individuals that can afford it, and lowering them for lower income people who really need help. Those old categories don't work, and they're preventing us from solving them problems.

So I'm not proposing anything radical. I just believe that anybody making over $250,000 a year should go back to the income tax rates we were paying under Bill Clinton. Back when our economy created nearly 23 million new jobs, the biggest budget surplus in history, and plenty of millionaires to boot. ... At the same time, most people agree that we should not raise taxes on middle-class families or small businesses -- not when so many folks are just trying to get by.

I do think there is room at the very top for marginal tax changes.

The only issue on taxes - Hillary Clinton is going to raise taxes, and Donald Trump and I are going to cut them.

A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

Hillary Clinton is raising your taxes and I'm lowering your taxes. That in itself is a big difference.

HALF of America pays NO taxes. Zero. So they're happy for tax rates to be raised on the other half that DOES pay any taxes.

Barack Obama is talking about cutting taxes. On net, he is a tax cutter. But the difference between Obama and John McCain is that Obama is raising some taxes on families, for example, with incomes over $250,000. Now, that amounts to about 2 percent, the richest 2 percent of American households. And even with those tax changes, even with all of the tax changes Obama's talking about, taxes will be lower under Obama than they were under the Clinton years.

There is some talk of lowering (the income tax), and they will have to. People are not making enough to pay it.

I will tell you this: I will not raise taxes on the middle-class to pay for these programs.

Taxes will always be lower under a Coalition government

We will have a massive, massive tax increase under Hillary Clinton's plan.

The larger the percentage of the national income taken by taxes the greater the deterrent to private production and employment. When the total tax burden grows beyond a bearable size, the problem of devising taxes that will not discourage and disrupt production becomes insoluble.

Progressive taxation of income and profits means that precisely those parts of the income which people would have saved and invested are taxed away