We retired Tax Justice Blog in April 2017. For new content on issues related to tax justice, go to www.justtaxesblog.org
Recent evidence has lead Citizens for Tax Justice to wonder: do the “experts” over at Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform intentionally lie, or are they just sloppy?
Here’s what we’re looking at:
In their recent policy brief, Americans for Tax Reform links to one of our reports and writes:
“…[E]ven the left-wing Center for Tax Justice admits that “in some parts of the country, $250,000 is really not very much to raise a family on and it’s unclear whether families in such a position can afford to pay higher taxes.”
The problem is that the quote they attribute as the position of Center for Tax Justice (who’s that?) is actually us here at Citizens for Tax Justice (thank you very much) reporting something from the New York Times, and it’s something that we clearly oppose. Here’s the full quote from CTJ’s report:
“Recent articles in the New York Times and the Fiscal Times quote observers and analyses questioning President Obama’s proposal to allow the Bush income tax cuts to expire for adjusted gross income (AGI) in excess of $250,000. One theme of these articles is that in some parts of the country, $250,000 is really not very much to raise a family on and it’s unclear whether families in such a position can afford to pay higher taxes. The idea that Obama’s income tax plan will result in unaffordable tax increases for people who make $250,000 a year is wrong on several levels”
On the one hand, supporting the theory that this misquote results from pure sloppiness is their error of accidently calling us Center for Tax Justice – something busy journalists do all the time.
On the other hand, supporting the theory that Grover’s Americans for Tax Reform is intentionally misrepresenting the position of Citizens for Tax Justice is that our report was a laundry list of reasons why families who make $250,000 can afford to pay higher taxes, making it almost impossible for any semi-literate person to have missed that point. (Plus it’s no secret CTJ supports tax increases for this group.)
Which theory sounds right to you?
| Did Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform intentionally lie about CTJ or are they just really sloppy? | |
|
They are sloppy! |
|
|
|
They are liars! |
|
|
Hard to tell. |
|
pollcode.com free polls |
|
Photo of Grover Norquist via Gage Skidmore Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0