Grading ZFC: More Republican Math!

PolitiFact Bias (PFB) writer Bryan White, via his conservatively skewed website Zebra Factcheck (ZFC), has committed a very similar error it pointed out in a recent PolitiFact Georgia fact-check on Cato Institute's Michael Cannon's statement concerning Obamacare "exchanges" being outlawed in Georgia. And I have to admit they both had a point: Cannon was talking about Obamacare exchanges in Georgia and in context he said--right at the beginning--that "by default" the feds would do their own exchanges in response. PolitiFact seemed to ignore this part of Cannon's claim and conflated it into something that should not have been called false. Yes, score one for PFB and Michael Cannon.

 

The error in this case is one which ZFC's writer Bryan White might call, if I had done the same thing, a logical "Red herring" or "Straw man." He does this in his fact-check of a statement by the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC)--that "Across the board tax rate cuts are regressive because a 20 percent tax cut for a millionaire – even as a share of income – amounts to a far greater benefit than a 20 percent cut for a hardworking low income American.” Instead of examining the premise of the statement he goes into a multifaceted dissertation on "effective tax rates" complete with pretty graphs, on how the overall rates were truly progressive up until seven years ago, and why poor Mitt Romney pays a lot more than Joe the Plumber.

 

He did not even try to actually calculate in numerical terms  whether there was a disproportional benefit to the rich of the across the board tax cut in and of itself. He even had something in his fact-check on how to "get there", quoting the IRS: “A tax that takes a larger percentage of income from low-income groups than from high-income groups.” So I will "get there", using two hypothetical progressive tax rates very close to what we have today, utilizing the 20% across the board factor.

 

Click to enlarge:  The 3rd thru 7th columns only needed formulas.

In the example above, we are using a 10% rate for a person with taxable income of $25,000 and a 25% rate for someone with income of $250,000, the current taxes paid using those rates, then re-calculated for a uniform across the board tax rate reduction of 20 percent. All other factors--excise taxes, corporate taxes--would be ignored because we are only concerned with the income tax cut itself and its effect on after-tax income (as that is the premise of the CPC statement). As shown in the last, highlighted bright yellow column, as a percent of after-tax income, the $250K earner has three times the additional income than that of the $25K earner. Now, you might say that it's because of the difference in tax rates, but even if you factor that in, the $250K earner still has 20% more after-tax income. THAT is the "far greater benefit" the CPC is talking about. The (yes, liberal) Center for Budget and Policy Priorities explains this "concept" as well in a website article. They chart the "regression" by income category.

 

We are not looking at the amount of money in the tax cut in absolute terms ($12,500 savings versus $500). We are looking at it in relative terms, to the amount of after-tax income as a percentage before the tax decrease to after the tax decrease.  Writer White seems to think that such a tax cut is perfectly proportional, but is is not.

 

Getting back to ZFC's error, it's very telling to note the usual faux outrage at PFB in regard to the similar PolitiFact Georgia error : "... Michael F. Cannon of the Cato Institute brings us yet another astonishing display of fact-check incompetence from PolitiFact"... "It's just another example of amazing incompetence from PolitiFact."

Zebra Factcheck's About page includes this rather ironic message:

... We expect to improve the standard for fact checking by applying rigorous standards consistently. And we’ll keep an eye on other fact checkers to encourage higher standards.

But wait! At the end of this ZFC, there's a link to a "correction"--maybe it just realized the self-contradictory, hypocritical error it had just made?   Maybe it wanted to apologize for its mistake and admit its "astonishing display of fact-check incompetence"?   Nope, too much to hope for. Sorry. It's more on the "subjectivity" of the CPC message, mixed in with a bit of charitable happy talk, ignoring the inherent objectivity of just doing some damn math.