Tax Text

Quite a remarkable story from the AP.  The headline: "Super rich see federal taxes drop dramatically." As far as I can tell, it's supposed to be a news story.

I wouldn't say it gets any facts wrong, but it's interesting how it presents them.  For instance, the first paragraph:

As millions of procrastinators scramble to meet Monday's tax filing deadline, ponder this: The super rich pay a lot less taxes than they did a couple of decades ago, and nearly half of U.S. households pay no income taxes at all.

While I suppose most readers understand that almost all those households not paying taxes are not the super rich, or the well off, or even the comfortably middle class, it would be easy to think otherwise based on the sentence structure and the headline.  It's not till almost the end that it's article explains who's not paying, and it's quickly followed by further explanation in case you thought this group has it too easy:

The vast majority of those who escape federal income taxes have low and medium incomes, and most of them pay other taxes, including Social Security and Medicare taxes, property taxes and retail sales taxes.

As far as the burden the biggest earners have, we don't get that until the midpoint, and once again, it's followed by further explanation--this time in case you thought they had it too rough.

More than half of the nation's tax revenue came from the top 10 percent of earners in 2007. More than 44 percent came from the top 5 percent. Still, the wealthy have access to much more lucrative tax breaks than people with lower incomes.

By "tax revenue" they're not referring to just the federal income tax, because in 2007, the top 5% percent paid over 60%, and the top 10% over 70%.  Still, I suppose a reader could be excused for mistakenly thinking it is a reference to federal income tax, since up to this point that's what the entire article has been about.

Second, they don't mention the percentage of income tax revenues (and revenues of all federal taxes combined) that the top 1%, 5% and 10% pay has been steadily increasing for 30 years.  (No reason not to mention that--they could then claim it's because the rich are getting richer.)

Then there's that weird bit about the wealthy having access to more lucrative tax breaks.  Considering that most of those in the bottom half aren't paying any income tax, it's hard to believe the well-off could get a much better deal.