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People think of taxes as money just being robbed from you. They don't consider the benefits of paying taxes. The benefits that they get and also the benefit of just being a part of a large group of people: a town, or a city, or a country, or a society that allegedly should stand together and all try to help each other.

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.

I've advocated a proportional tax system. You make $10 billion, you pay a billion. You make $10, you pay one. And everybody gets treated the same way.

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.

I think that taxes have to exist. They should exist at the lowest possible level, and to the extent that we can, we shouldn't invent more. Maybe that's my experience being mayor of New York City, where we had so many taxes.

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

We spend millions of dollars every year just for the right to pay our taxes, but once again, do we really need to do that? Why don't we simplify it? And I've certainly looked at fair tax, I've looked at flat tax, and if I get to the U.S. Senate, I'd like to review that.

In theory, taxes should be like shopping. What I buy is government services. What I pay are my taxes.

Taxes should be simple and fair... I'm not for increasing income taxes - if we even have an income tax.

Everybody should pay some tax, just as everybody should vote.