Just like in every US presidential election campaign, the two opponents have been using statistics to bolster their arguments. But do the numbers stand up?
Where's the middle?
Politicians - particularly wealthy ones like Mitt Romney - are often accused of being out of touch. Sometimes they do not help their case.
Speaking recently to ABC News, Mitt Romney said: "No-one can say my plan is going to raise taxes on middle-income people, because principle number one is to keep the burden down on middle-income taxpayers".
The interviewer, George Stephanopoulos, asked if $100,000 (£62,000) was middle income, to which Mr Romney replied "no, middle income is $200,000 [£123,000] to $250,000 [£154,000] and less."
But it's not just the Republicans. President Obama's been boasting about "middle-class" tax cuts - and in that he includes households whose income is under that magic number, $250,000.
"Median [household] income in the United States is just about $50,000," says Roberton Williams from America's Tax Policy Center, "so this is much, much higher than the median income. In fact, we estimate two or three per cent of Americans have incomes above those thresholds."
So for families on $250,000 dollars to be middle class, the "middle" would have to extend to the 97th percentile - in other words, most of America.
So why "median" income rather than a simple average, the mean? The reason is that the mean is skewed by very high earners. One could earn - at the extremes - billions, but it's hard to earn less than nothing. So average income will be a lot higher than the actual incomes most people take home.
Roberton Williams explains it with a joke. "If Bill Gates [the Microsoft billionaire] walks into a bar," he says, "everyone [in the bar] is on average a millionaire."
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