Taxes

The “IRS scandal” is best understood as a significant work of fiction, suggested New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait on Tuesday. As Chait tells it, conservatives’ false belief that the tax agency subjected righty groups to especially exacting treatment “prefigure[d] the Republicans’ own blueprint for the use of government as an implement of partisan domination and revenge.”

At the Associated Press on Friday, economics writer Paul Wiseman attempted to rewrite history, pretending that "trickle down" economics is a term Republicans have used for their economic plans since the days of Ronald Reagan, and that the current GOP tax plan which has made it through the House and is being considered by the Senate is more of the same thing. In fact, Reagan's policies, which were…

In Saturday’s New York Times, reporter Patricia Cohen took the most jaundiced view of the GOP tax-cutting plans with some liberal rhetoric about Republican attempts to pare down the estate tax, colloquially known as the death tax: “Only the Most Wealthy, Including Trump, Gain From Estate Tax’s Repeal.” More tough Times headlines: “Some See a Foundation Of Gimmickry in Tax Bill,” and“Party’s…

Liberal New York Times economics reporter turned leftist economics columnist Eduardo Porter is appalled that Americans refuse to go along with confiscatory tax rates like the rest of the civilized world, and suggested racism is part of the problem, in Wednesday’s “Considering the True Cost Of Keeping Taxes Lower” on the front of the Business Day section. And reporter Alan Rappeport continued his…

Worried about Senate Republicans adding repeal of the ObamaCare health insurance mandate to tax reform legislation, on Wednesday, MSNBC repeatedly claimed that the GOP had stepped on a “landmine” and awakened a “sleeping giant” by taking up the issue. The liberal journalists eagerly predicted that the move would get Democrats “fired up” in opposition. 

On Monday’s Morning Joe, the panel brought on liberal economist Jeffrey Sachs to talk about the Republican tax reform bill currently making its way through Congress. Somewhat predictably, Sachs used his platform to attack the plan as a form of “theft,” the “biggest heist in history,” and a plot by America’s “richest gazillionaires” to “bankrupt” the country for their own personal enrichment.…

On the Fox Business Network on Tuesday, Happening Now host Melissa Francis would not let her Democratic Party guest get away with refusing to answer her question about tax reform. Eventually, she goaded former Clinton adviser Simon Rosenberg into acknowledging that he was refusing to answer her question (then why did he appear in what he knew was a discussion segment?); when she wouldn't move on…

One of the most challenging and important jobs for an economics professor is to teach students how little we know and can possibly know. My longtime friend and colleague Dr. Thomas Sowell says, "It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." Nobel laureate Friedrich August von Hayek admonished, "The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little…

On Friday, ABC’s Good Morning America touted a new ABC News/Washington Post poll claiming that a majority of Americans oppose the Republican tax plan that was announced on Thursday. The only problem was that the survey was conducted October 29 through November 1, meaning that any questions about tax reform were asked before the GOP actually released the legislative proposal.

On Sunday's Fareed Zakaria GPS show, the host peddled the long-discredited mythology that the Reagan and Bush 43 supply-side tax cuts caused annual budget deficits to explode. Zakaria interviewed former Treasury Secretary and Obama economic adviser Larry Summers and current Trump administration Council of Economic Advisers head Kevin Hassett, but he did so separately, thus teeing up Summers to go…

Federal income tax was first introduced under the Revenue Act of 1861 to help defray war costs. Congress repealed the tax in 1871 when the need for government revenue declined, only to restore it in 1894 as part of the Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act. The public policy debate surrounding the constitutionality of income tax has been going on ever since.

While covering Republican efforts to reform the tax system and the health care industry, on Monday’s CBS This Morning, correspondent Major Garrett turned to Democrats to tear down both GOP agenda items, claiming the Trump administration tax plan was “angling to benefit the wealthy” and that the President “caved to conservatives” by maintaining his opposition to ObamaCare subsidies.

On Friday, the Treasury Department reported that the federal government took in a record $3.315 trillion in revenue during the just-completed 2017 fiscal year. None of the broadcast networks bothered to mention the Treasury on any of their Friday evening or weekend broadcasts. Yet even as revenues have grown at an average of 14 percent annually since 1980, liberal journalists have spent that…

The journalists at CBS on Friday sounded more like DNC campaign operatives instead of reporters. Talking to Paul Ryan about budget issues, This Morning co-host Charlie Rose pressed, “How are you going to make the case that this is not a tax cut for the wealthy?”