Last Dec. 30 saw two very different news stories about taxes paid by the highest income Americans. The New York Times ran a front-page feature-length story alleging that the nation’s 400 highest earners have been “saving billions” by manipulating the tax system to drive down their effective tax rate year after year from 27 percent under President Clinton to just 17 percent in 2012, “the last year for which final data is available.”

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