Just in time for Tax Day, the April 13 issue of Parade magazine gave readers left-wing talking points on corporate taxation dressed up as objective reporting.
Contributor Gary Weiss cited two left-wing interest groups and liberal Democratic congressman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) in "Are You Paying For Corporate Fat Cats?" By the end of the article, readers are all but left to seethe an angry "yes!" to that question.
Yet at no point were any economists consulted to point out that corporate tax levies are always ultimately paid by the consumer, who bears the final cost of goods and services produced by the taxed corporations. Taxes are yet one more input cost into final goods and services. So simply put, corporations don't pay taxes, individuals do.
Weiss failed to tackle the political slant of the groups he consulted, which were merely tagged as nonprofits. A quick Google search of the groups makes clear the liberal slant of the organizations.
For example, Weiss cited Charles Cray of the "watchdog group" Center for Corporate Policy (CCP). Cray's bio makes clear he's a veteran of left-wing organizations such as Citizen Works and Greenpeace USA.
Cray's colleagues on the CCP steering committee include an activist with MoveOn.org. CCP also approves many liberal legislative proposals aimed at curbing executive compensation.
In other words, CCP is obsessed with fostering and exploiting envy of corporate officers, particularly CEOs.
Citizens for Tax Justice is also well-credentialed with the political Left. From the CTJ's Web site:
CTJ's studies on the impact of tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations have kept the issue alive in the debate over the federal budget deficit. CTJ's Inequality and the Federal Budget Deficit (1991) examined the linkage between tax cuts for the wealthy and the mounting federal deficit. This attention helped set the stage for President Clinton's 1993 budget act, which took back some of the tax cuts previously granted to the wealthiest Americans by the supply-side tax plan of 1981.
