Media Matters is asking why a tax cut for 98% of Americans is being attacked as a tax hike. Short answer: because it disproportionately affects those with disproportionate power to control the media.
Last week, President Obama unveiled a budget outline that extends the Bush tax cuts for all but the top two percent of taxpayers and makes permanent a tax credit of up to $800 for low- and middle-income workers that was included in the recent stimulus package, among other tax cuts.
On the other hand, individual taxpayers with taxable income above $200,000 ($250,000 for families) per year would pay more in taxes under Obama’s plan, under which the tax rates paid on income in the top brackets would revert to their levels under President Clinton in the 1990s — from 33 and 35 percent to 36 and 39.6 percent. Slate.com’s Daniel Gross estimates that for someone with $350,000 in income, this will amount to about $1,500 a year in increased taxes.
But the media, eager to hype their bogus “war on the wealthy” storyline, have portrayed it as a tax increase.
Media Matters gives lots of details substantiating its observation that several major media outlets have been busy spinning the news rather than reporting it.
Out of curiosity, I looked up the stats on the IRS website. On interesting report indicated that in 2005 (most recent year for this report) appeared to indicate that slightly more than half of the taxpayers with over $200,000 and combined deductions and adjustments of 100 percent or more.
In other words, with a total income of over 200,000, they showed an adjusted gross income of $0 or less.
Of course I could be reading this wrong
Here's a news flash…the major media outlets have been spinning the news rather than reporting it for decades, maybe longer! True journalism (at least with regard to the major media outlets) has gone the way of the latin language–something to be studied in undergarad, but no application in the real world.
This has much less to do with those that have disproportionate power to control the media than it does pure commercialsim. The media will put it out there if it sells baby. Then they'll keep spinning it until it loses its appeal. Works both ways too. How long did we have to listen to blow by blow (pardon the pun) accounts of the Clinton scandal? Was that really that news worthy on a national scale for all that coverage? How about the whole O.J. Simpson thing?
Here's a good look at the tax fear factor reported by conservative so-called journalists:
Tax Thresholds: Why the horror stories about the Obama tax plan are lies