Swing and a miss!
Much has been said in politics and media regarding the GOP’s successful efforts to pass tax reform. Much of what has been said has been negative.
Democratic leadership and their allies in the press, for example, promised that the bill would bring about Armageddon. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said it was the worst bill ever to go through Congress. And then, when fire and brimstone failed to show, they resorted to scoffing at tax reform-related wage increases and bonuses as “crumbs.”
Attempts to talk the bill’s effects down into the depths of Hell have been a team effort, but the honor for the most hilariously failed at-bat goes to the New York Times, which created a hypothetical couple (“Sam and Felicity”) to claim the legislation would harm people in a very specific income bracket. Just one problem: As it turns out, the hypothetical couple will actually benefit from the bill, according to a recent Wall Street Journal article highlighting the issue.
The Journal report, titled “The TurboTax Defense,” comes after the Times itself issued a correction noting “Sam and Felicity” would actually benefit from the real tax bill. Which is rather more embarrassing than the average correction, because Sam and Felicity were their own creation.
Attached to the bottom of the original Times report, titled “Get to Know the New Tax Code While Filling Out This Year’s 1040,” is the following editor’s note:
An earlier version of this article incorrectly described the probable effect of the new tax law on a hypothetical couple’s 2018 tax bill. The TurboTax “What-If Worksheet” that generated the projection for their 2018 taxes failed to indicate that the couple would probably be entitled to claim a sizable deduction for income earned from consulting. As a result of that deduction, the amount they would likely owe on taxes would decline by $43, not rise by $3,896.
Well, yes, that makes all the difference in the world, doesn’t it?
Just so we’re clear: The Times invented a hypothetical couple to claim the new tax bill would hurt people in that specific bracket. Then it turns out that their own fake couple is going to benefit, albeit only slightly, from the GOP’s tax reform efforts. That’s pretty rich.
Lastly, as the University of Chicago’s Daniel Hemel noted, “Sam and Felicity” aren’t even taking full advantage of their tax benefits. “Still don’t see why Samuel & Felicity aren’t claiming nonrefundable dependent credits of $500 for their children Luke & Heidi and their parent Sydney, for additional tax savings of $1500 under the new law,” he tweeted.
Joking aside, this is sad for the Times. Someone at the paper must’ve realized that its best and most passionate argument against tax reform was cartoonishly silly, prompting an editor somewhere to greenlight a piece involving very scary hypotheticals. One wonders why they can’t just report the facts without injecting so much ideology and propaganda into it.
