Washington Post “Fact Checker” Glenn Kessler let a Democrat presidential candidate have it, the full “Four Pinocchios” rating — for Sen. Kamala Harris claiming Trump’s tax cut was actually a “middle-class tax hike.”
On Monday, Harris tweeted: “The average tax refund is down about $170 compared to last year. Let’s call the President’s tax cut what it is: a middle-class tax hike to line the pockets of already wealthy corporations and the 1%.”
Kessler cited not just a congressional committee and a left-leaning tax think tank. He even cited the Cato Institute
When both the Joint Tax Committee and the Tax Policy Center looked at the impact of the tax bill, they concluded that in 2018, most people would see an overall reduction in taxes. The Tax Policy Center found that 80.4 percent of all tax payers would have a tax cut, compared with about 5 percent experiencing a tax increase.
In the middle quintile, 91 percent would get a tax cut, averaging about $1,090, with 7.3 percent facing a tax increase averaging about $910.
Chris Edwards of the libertarian Cato Institute has argued that both the Joint Tax Committee and the Tax Policy Center present a misleading picture because they include payroll taxes (such as for Social Security and Medicare) — and the Trump tax legislation left payroll taxes untouched. When you exclude payroll taxes, it appears as though the largest share of the tax changes goes to the middle-income quintile, according to his calculations.
Harris spokesman Ian Sams claimed the senator was referring to the “long-term effect” of the tax cut, to which Kessler replied: “Oh. That’s certainly not clear in her tweet.” This is why it can seem unfair to fact-check a tweet, which isn’t exactly a term paper. On the other hand, tweets have great power and influence in our politics, as you can see from the reaction to Donald Trump. – READ MORE