Taxes are pretty significant at the lower incomes. Not only are they paying 15-25% taxes after considering local, federal, state, and property taxes (even though federal are low) but whenever they want services from anyone in the upper quintiles they are also effectively paying the regulatory and tax burden of those enterprises since the customer ultimately assumes all the costs of the business.

Think for a second, if someone wants child care -- they must pay enough not only to satisfy the worker's basic needs but also the worker's income tax, business taxes, property taxes of the daycare, government mandated licensing and bonding, etc. None of those get recorded as 'taxes' the person contracting that service has paid, but really they are also paying those.

Given how little most of the lower pay workers have extra to work with, and how little they get in government services for what they pay, I don't think it's much a stretch for them to think taxes are holding them back. Being able open up saving even couple percent of income massively improves your financial safety and cushion at those brackets.