Among the Tax Cut Losers: Biased Journalists

Networks Recycle Liberal Group’s PR Spin, Pound Bush for Not Giving Tax Cuts to Non-Taxpayers

What is the purpose of the new tax cut President Bush signed this week? Is it designed to perk up the economy? Or is it designed to provide welfare checks for poor people who don’t pay taxes?

Last night and this morning, the networks fervently picked answer #2. Yesterday, The New York Times published a front-page article by reporter David Firestone that largely served as a press release for the paleoliberal Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. The CBPP told the Times that most families with incomes from $10,500 to $26,625 will not see any “tax relief,” including 11.9 million children.

The networks picked up this story and ran with it, telling the traditional class-war sob story about how the poor won’t get any cash, while the rich don’t need any. Left out or played down: that most of these taxpayers with kids pay little or no income tax, so “fully refundable” checks would be welfare payments, not tax cuts.

ABC: Peter Jennings began: “On World News Tonight, the tax cut surprise. Some of the people who need it most will benefit the least.” In the top story, reporter Linda Douglass found office messenger Rhonda Williams to lament that she would have used the money to send her kids to a “nice college.” Near the end, Douglass admitted: “Many low-income families do not pay income taxes but are entitled to a portion of the child credit.”

CBS: Substitute anchor Jane Clayson began the Evening News: “Millions of U.S. taxpayers won’t get the rebate they’re expecting.” CBS was the oddball in not making this the top story, but reporter Bill Plante found a woman who wanted to pay for Pampers and “won’t be getting that refund check the president says is in the mail.” Plante’s last sentence allowed the White House “points out that many of the families who will miss out on the $400 child tax credit already pay little or no income tax.”

CNN: The afternoon show Inside Politics began with an announcer: “The check may not be in the mail. This family is looking forward to the new child tax credit. But, surprise. Millions of low-income families won’t get it.” In the top story, Kate Snow totally ignored the angle that most of those “left out” don’t pay income taxes. On Wednesday’s edition of NewsNight, anchor Aaron Brown warmly previewed the Firestone story and said it proved “why The New York Times is a great newspaper.”

NBC: Tom Brokaw began Nightly News: “Cut out. Why millions of lower-income families may not be getting the help they expected from President Bush’s new tax cut.” Brokaw described an “embarrassing omission,” that Bush left out low-income families in the tax cut. In the top story, reporter Campbell Brown even scolded Democrats, “who only spoke up about it in response to a New York Times report today.”

On CNBC’s The News with Brian Williams last night, Williams echoed Brokaw’s “embarrassing omission” line, and ran the same Campbell Brown report. Both shows had the “embarrassing omission” of the non-taxpayer angle.

The bias even extended to the White House briefing yesterday. NBC’s David Gregory incorrectly insisted a “large group of people” won’t get “their money.” ABC’s Terry Moran proposed to Ari Fleischer he should agree with his summation: “I just want to make sure that you are saying that the White House agreed to make the choice to leave these children behind.” For more on this very biased night, see today’s CyberAlert. —

Just so you have a source:

IRS Tax Stats

Footnotes at end of table.

Table 3.--Number of Individual Income Tax Returns, Income, Exemptions and Deductions, Tax, and

Average Tax, by Size of Adjusted Gross Income, Tax Years 1999-2001--Continued

[All figures are estimates based on samples--money amounts are in thousands of dollars except as indicated]

Returns showing total income tax

Size of adjusted

Average tax (whole dollars) [4]

Tax as percentage of AGI [4]

gross income

1999

2000 [r]

2001 [p]

1999

2000 [r]

2001 [p]

(19)

(20)

(21)

(22)

(23)

(24)

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116147596

Total ........................................................................

9,280

10,129

9,401

15.7

16.1

15.3

No adjusted gross income [1,2] ........................................................................

22,567

21,673

8,680

[5]

$1 under $1,000 [2]........................................................................

3.7

2.0

1.2

$1,000 under $3,000 [2]........................................................................

132

134

106

7.0

6.9

5.6

$3,000 under $5,000 [2]........................................................................

172

179

105

4.0

4.2

2.4

$5,000 under $7,000 ........................................................................

302

297

162

5.1

5.0

2.7

$7,000 under $9,000 ........................................................................

298

331

219

3.7

4.1

2.7

$9,000 under $11,000........................................................................

497

470

320

5.0

4.7

3.2

$11,000 under $13,000 ........................................................................

719

704

557

6.0

5.9

4.6

$13,000 under $15,000 ........................................................................

864

883

753

6.2

6.3

5.4

$15,000 under $17,000 ........................................................................

1,054

1,052

926

6.6

5.8

$17,000 under $19,000 ........................................................................

1,300

1,279

1,143

7.2

7.1

6.4

$19,000 under $22,000 ........................................................................

1,549

1,565

1,461

7.5

7.6

7.1

$22,000 under $25,000 ........................................................................

1,832

1,815

1,751

7.8

7.7

7.4

$25,000 under $30,000 ........................................................................

2,277

2,248

2,203

8.3

8.2

8.0

$30,000 under $40,000 ........................................................................

3,101

3,094

2,990

8.9

8.6

$40,000 under $50,000 ........................................................................

4,462

4,306

10.0

9.6

$50,000 under $75,000 ........................................................................

6,788

6,824

6,551

11.1

11.2

10.7

$75,000 under $100,000........................................................................

11,767

11,631

11,130

13.7

13.6

13.0

$100,000 under $200,000........................................................................

22,855

22,783

21,943

17.4

17.3

16.7

$200,000 under $500,000 ........................................................................

69,465

68,628

67,145

24.0

23.9

23.4

$500,000 under $1,000,000........................................................................

192,426

192,092

192,204

28.4

28.3

28.4

$1,000,000 under $1,500,000 ........................................................................

354,914

353,561

359,041

29.4

29.2

29.7

$1,500,000 under $2,000,000........................................................................

507,694

505,605

514,080

29.5

29.4

30.0

$2,000,000 under $5,000,000 ........................................................................

875,150

873,054

892,269

29.3

29.2

30.1

$5,000,000 under $10,000,000........................................................................

1,945,630

1,951,599

2,022,372

28.5

29.7

$10,000,000 or more ........................................................................

6,326,785

6,790,191

6,000,557

25.4

27.4

[p] -- Preliminary.

[r] -- Revised or corrected.

NOTES: Details may not add to totals because of rounding. All amounts are in current dollars. Data are subject to sampling error. Tax law and tax form changes affect the year-to-year comparability of data.

[1] In addition to low-income taxpayers, this size class (and others) includes taxpayers with “tax preferences,” not reflected in “adjusted gross income” or “taxable income,” which are subject to the

“alternative minimum tax” (included in “total income tax”), defined in Table 1, footnote 35.

[2] A study for 1993 showed that about half of all returns with “adjusted gross income” under $5,000 were filed by dependents of other taxpayers.

[3] “Adjusted gross income” (AGI) minus “personal exemptions and total deductions” will not equal “taxable income” because the total of deductions and exemptions could exceed AGI and, therefore, includes

amounts that could not be used in computing “taxable income.”

[4] For the most part, the statistics for 1999-2001 are comparable. However, for Tax Year 1999, total income tax is the sum of two components, “ income tax after credits” and “alternative minimum tax” (AMT),

while, for Tax Years 2000 and 2001, total income tax was, for the most part, the same as income tax after credits, because the tax after credits was redefined to include AMT.

[5] Not computed.

SOURCE: IRS, Statistics of Income Bulletin, Winter 2002-2003, Publication 1136 (Rev. 4-2003). Also, Statistics of Income—Individual Income Tax Returns, appropriate years.

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