Quack if you hate taxes!
I am NumbersGuy, so when I see a statistic quoted, I question it. Sometimes, the statistic is so ludicrous that I can't help myself. This morning, Bruce Tinsley quoted "Mallard's Tax Fact #34" which he apparently got from "The American Enterprise" online. "The costs of operating the tax system", according to this quote, "eat up an estimated 65 percent of every tax dollar collected from us!" This sounded either insane or intentionally misleading, so I had to check it out.
The quote appears to come from an article entitled 'How America Drifted from Welfare to "Entitlement",' by James Payne" The precise quote is "And of course there are the costs of operating the tax system: compliance costs, litigation costs, tax planning distortions, and so on. A few years ago I made an attempt to add up all these burdens. The total was a 65 cent loss for every dollar of taxes collected." Notice that the full quote is not as alarming as the Mallard version. First of all, the "costs of operating the tax system" in the original clearly include a bunch of non-government expenses that you might not assume are included if you only read the abbreviated version. Secondly, the original article makes clear that the number is an estimate.
So, did Tinsley intentionally distort the quote to support his ideological bent, or did he just shorten it to fit in his comic strip and provide comic punch. You tell me. In the remaining frame Mallard says, "In a related study, my findings suggest that the mainstream media are about as likely to report this as the government is to quit doing it." What a birdbrain! I'll read the original article to see if I need to comment on it in the future.
The quote appears to come from an article entitled 'How America Drifted from Welfare to "Entitlement",' by James Payne" The precise quote is "And of course there are the costs of operating the tax system: compliance costs, litigation costs, tax planning distortions, and so on. A few years ago I made an attempt to add up all these burdens. The total was a 65 cent loss for every dollar of taxes collected." Notice that the full quote is not as alarming as the Mallard version. First of all, the "costs of operating the tax system" in the original clearly include a bunch of non-government expenses that you might not assume are included if you only read the abbreviated version. Secondly, the original article makes clear that the number is an estimate.
So, did Tinsley intentionally distort the quote to support his ideological bent, or did he just shorten it to fit in his comic strip and provide comic punch. You tell me. In the remaining frame Mallard says, "In a related study, my findings suggest that the mainstream media are about as likely to report this as the government is to quit doing it." What a birdbrain! I'll read the original article to see if I need to comment on it in the future.