Taxes

Leave it to taxpayer-subsidized NPR to subtly shade its reporting on a federal government data breach in a way that softens the blow for the Internal Revenue Service.

The Big Three's morning newscasts on Wednesday and Thursday all covered the breach of an online IRS system by hackers that compromised the personal information of 100,000 taxpayers. However, none of the programs mentioned President Obama by name during their reporting, nor did they revisit any of the other problems or scandals involving the agency in recent years. CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly…

Seldom does one see such an obvious betrayal of reporters' biased mindsets as the one found in the opening paragraph of an Associated Press report earlier today on CEO pay at major U.S. publicly-held companies. According to the AP's Steve Rothwell and Ryan Nakashima, that entertainers, whose incomes are derived from leveraging special physical and artistic talents, deserve all the money they can…

On Tuesday, Associated Press reporter Martin Crutsinger celebrated the federal government's large April budget surplus, caused by "a flood of tax payments (which) pushed government receipts to an all-time high." He didn't mention that the tax payments were higher largely because of tax increases passed in 2013. It certainly didn't occur because of an improving economy — because it's not…

On Thursday, CBS This Morning offered a scant 26 seconds on a Wall Street Journal story about nearly 1,600 IRS employees having evaded taxes over a ten-year period, with co-host Norah O'Donnell noting: "Workers improperly claimed dependents, repeatedly failed to file timely tax returns, and claimed a tax credit for first-time home buyers when the IRS worker didn't buy a house. Most of the IRS…

Apple Inc. is not merely a tech company; it’s also a destroyer of right-wing doctrine. That was the main argument of a Tuesday blog post by Daily Kos founder and publisher Markos Moulitsas. Kos asserted that the huge success of the California-based Apple refutes the “conservatives [who] bray incessantly about the Golden State's ‘high taxes and burdensome regulations.’” He also lauded the company…

Today's Census Bureau report on durable goods orders was like a poorly made cake with delicious frosting: tasty at first, but awful when fully experienced. The frosting in today's report was that overall orders increased in March by a seasonally adjusted 4.0 percent. The trouble is that an important, widely recognized element of that report — what the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger vaguely…

The Washington Free Beacon has made another terrific clip compilation – this time, on the MSNBC hosts who owe large chunks of tax money thumping a tub against tax avoidance and in favor of civic-minded taxpaying. One precious clip is Melissa Harris-Perry proclaiming “I don’t get to opt out of paying taxes once we’ve kind of made a collective decision.” David Rutz offered a summary:

So when is a recession not a genuine recession? Apparently when it's "technical." Unfortunately, the term "technical recession" appears to be well on the way to devolving into what has long been considered the real definition of a recession for the purpose of discounting its validity.

According to the National Review, MSNBC’s Touré Neblett, who serves as co-host of The Cycle, reportedly owes more than $59,000 in back taxes.

Minneapolis Star Tribune reporter Jackie Crosby's writeup on how "Minnesota has been losing residents to other states" since 2002, and that it's especially troubling because "young adults are leaving in the greatest numbers," contained an enormous blind spot. The Gopher State, aka the Land of 10,000 Lakes, is also sardonically known as the Land of 10,000 Taxes by many residents, and with good…

Al Sharpton isn't the only MSNBC host who has a problem with paying taxes. Michael Hewlett of North Carolina's Winston-Salem Journal reported on Wednesday that Melissa Harris-Perry and her husband owe "about $70,000 in delinquent taxes, according to a notice filed in Forsyth County Hall of Justice earlier this month." The IRS placed a tax lien on the couple as a result.

Late Monday afternoon, the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger produced a typically dodgy dispatch on the government's Monthly Treasury Statement. The Treasury Department released the March version of that report covering the first six months of the current fiscal year early Monday afternoon. The odd thing is, while it has been published elsewhere at the web sites of certain of its subscribers…

Vaccine skeptics have a well-deserved reputation for not caring about facts, but according to American Prospect blogger Paul Waldman, many right-wing anti-taxers resemble anti-vaxxers in terms of their shaky grasp of reality. “All the GOP presidential candidates are lining up to receive the wisdom of Arthur Laffer as they formulate their economic plans,” wrote Waldman in a Friday post. “This is…