Three days after the New York Times carried a front page story prompted by material fed to it by a liberal group, "Tax Law Omits Child Credit in Low-Income Brackets," a story which never pointed out that parents in the $10,500 to $26,000 annual income range addressed in its story already don't pay any net income taxes, the Times returned with another front page article fed to it by a couple of liberal, anti-tax cut groups suddenly concerned the tax cut was not expansive enough.
The June 1 story by David Firestone, the same reporter who re- wrote the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities press release into the May 29 front page piece, began his June 1 liberal press release in the guise of a news story: "A new study by groups critical of the tax law that President Bush signed on Wednesday has found that 8 million mostly low-income taxpayers will not receive any benefit from the law."
This time, Firestone at least focused on how these people really do pay a bit of income tax, but
while he noted that they are in the 10 percent tax bracket, the lowest one, so they don't get another cut this year, he failed to point out how they already got a huge tax cut two years ago when the lowest rate was reduced from 15 to 10 percent, thus providing them with a 33 percent tax cut, the biggest one afforded to any tax bracket.
As documented in the May 30 CyberAlert, all the distorted network reporting about how parents making $10,000 to $26,000 don't qualify for the increase in the child credit were spawned by a Thursday front page New York Times story which was little more than a conduit for a press release (or a public relations guy's phone call tipping the Times reporter) from the left-wing Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a story which though it went into great detail about the specifics of the income range in question and how the 2001 tax cut bill governs the amount of a credit those people can receive, never made the most relevant
point:
That virtually no parent, with kids 17 or younger, who earns under $26,000 pays any net federal income tax. The CBPP Web site reflects how they successfully used the New York Times to advance their political agenda. For more:
http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/2003/cyb20030530.asp#3
An excerpt from Firestone's June 1 story:
....The new analysis says that the taxpayers who get nothing from the tax law are primarily low-income single people who do not have children and lack income from dividends or capital gains. A large number of low- and moderate-income single parents with children over 16 will also get no benefit from the law, because it did not change the tax rate for such parents who are unmarried.
The study was conducted by two groups who have been critical of the law, the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, which is affiliated with the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal research group.
Last week, the two groups, along with Citizens for Tax Justice, found that 6.5 million minimum-wage families -- with nearly 12 million children -- would not receive the $400-per-child increase in the child tax credit contained in the new law. The families were left out of the tax law in last-minute Congressional negotiations over how much to cut the tax on stock dividends and capital gains, while keeping the entire bill under the Senate limit of $350 billion.
In combination with the children who were cut from the bill's benefits by the Congressional negotiators, the study says, there are 50 million households -- 36 percent of all households in the nation -- who will receive no benefit from the tax law. The figure includes people who do not earn enough to owe income tax....
The Republican National Committee Web site describes the law in detail and summarizes the point that many members of Congress have also made this week.
"Who benefits under the president's plan?" the Web site asks. "Everyone who pays taxes -- especially middle-income Americans -- as tax rate reductions passed by Congress in 2001 are made effective immediately."
Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary, made a similar point in his news briefing on Thursday, saying that people in the lowest tax bracket would "benefit the most" from the bill. "This certainly does deliver tax relief to the people who pay income taxes," he said, referring particularly to families with children....
But the new study found five million taxpayers in the lowest tax bracket who get no benefit from the law, and 2.5 million single parents with children who also pay taxes but get nothing.
In the first category are taxpayers in the 10 percent bracket who have no children and no dividend or capital gains income. This group, which constitutes 89 percent of all single taxpayers in the lowest bracket, do not benefit from the expansion of the 10 percent bracket because they are already in it. They have no children, so they do not get the child credit, and they do not benefit from the law's relief for married couples. Members of this group, who make $9,300 to $13,800 a year, now pay up to $600 in income taxes.
The second group consists of 2.5 million taxpayers in the head-of-household filing status -- mostly single parents -- who have a child over 16 and who are in the two lowest tax brackets. The study found that they will not receive a tax cut, even though they pay as much as $5,200 in income taxes, because the lowest bracket is not expanded for head-of-household filers under the new law. The child credit is not available, either, because of the age of the children....
"It's another illustration that the real purpose of this tax bill was not to give a boost to the economy now," said Robert Greenstein, executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. "The bill really consists of new provisions, like dividend tax cuts, that administration officials and their supporters in Congress have long wanted for other reasons. If they were really serious about boosting the economy, they would not have excluded these people, because they're the ones who spend rather than save."
Mr. Fleischer, contacted Friday on the president's trip to Europe, said the study failed to take into account that many people who did not benefit from this tax bill received benefits in the president's first tax cut, in 2001.
"If any taxpayers did not get tax relief in this bill, it is because it was such a priority to get them a head start on tax cuts in 2001," he said. "They had a two-year head start, because they were prioritized over upper-income taxpayers. The upper income taxpayers had to wait for tax relief for this bill."...
END of Excerpt
For the Times article in full:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/01/national/01TAX.html
But, I'm not totally innocent in that department, either. c.i.
