With all of the attention focused recently on ensuring that North Carolina public school students are able to read at grade level by the end of the third grade, perhaps now is a good time to put forward a brief test of adult reading comprehension.
Consider the following passage:
Taxpayers in every income category will save tens of millions of dollars because of state tax reforms enacted in North Carolina in 2013. Combining 2013 reforms with a 2011 sales-tax rate reduction pushed by the Republican-led General Assembly, lower- and middle-income households will enjoy annual savings of $682 million.
Accepting the information in that passage as true, which of the following is also true?
A. Taxpayers in every income category will save tens of millions of dollars because of state tax reforms enacted in North Carolina in 2013.
B. Combining 2013 reforms with a 2011 sales-tax rate reduction pushed by the Republican-led General Assembly, lower- and middle-income households will enjoy annual savings of $682 million.
C. Lower- and middle-income households in North Carolina will see tax savings only if one counts a 2011 sales-tax rate reduction alongside 2013 tax reforms. Considered on its own, the 2013 tax package benefits only the well-to-do.
D. A and B, but not C.
E. I’m not very good at math, but anything associated with Republicans must be bad.
Unsure of the proper answer? Perhaps a little more information will help.
In 2015 households earning less than $25,000 a year, the lowest income category, will save a total of $79 million thanks to the 2013 legislation. Households earning less than $50,000 will see annual tax savings of $147 million.
Note that the preceding paragraph says nothing about the 2011 sales-tax rate reduction. In contrast, the following paragraph references both 2011 and 2013.
Gains for these low- and middle-income taxpayers are much greater when Beacon Hill Institute economists add the 2011 sales-tax decline into their calculations. For the lowest-income earners, total tax savings in 2015 will be $157 million. Total tax savings climb to almost $350 million for households earning up to $50,000.
So what’s your final verdict? If you think the proper answer is E, there’s not much hope that evidence will alter your judgment. Devoting time to improving your comprehension skills would be an unwise use of scarce resources.
If you answered A or B, perhaps you didn’t spend enough time looking at the options. Please try this exercise again.
Those of you who answered D are ready to move on to more difficult reading material. Good job.
Did you answer C? If so, you might require a little remediation.
Don’t feel too bad. Some experienced members of the Tar Heel political media fared no better when they read the quoted passages above in a John Locke Foundation news release detailing a report on state tax changes adopted since 2011.
The “headline news” from the JLF release should sound familiar: Taxpayers in every income category will save tens of millions of dollars because of state tax reforms enacted in North Carolina in 2013. The news release’s headline says: “N.C. tax reforms to benefit every income group, new study shows.”
Yet a leading editorial writer at one of the state’s largest newspapers chose to ignore that news in a blog entry: “If you count the 2011 sales-tax cut enacted by the Republican legislature, JLF says, low-income North Carolinians are paying a lot less.”
Yes, JLF did say that, but the writer implies through an error of omission that the news release and its accompanying report said nothing about the benefits of 2013 tax reforms — in and of themselves — for low- and middle-income taxpayers. If his answer in the multiple-choice quiz above is not C, he certainly implies that he is making that choice.
Another example of an implied answer C comes from the statewide syndicated columnist who included the following passage in one of his recent pieces:
“It’s simply false to claim that recent tax changes in North Carolina are allowing the well-to-do to get their taxes reduced ‘on the backs of’ lower- and middle-income groups,” wrote Locke Foundation vice president Roy Cordato.
By recent, Cordato meant not just the huge tax overhaul that state lawmakers approved last summer. He included the Republican-controlled legislature’s decision to allow a sales tax hike to expire in 2011.
Well, actually, Cordato’s comments applied to the “huge tax overhaul” from 2013, as evidenced from the rest of the news release quote that’s omitted from the syndicated column.
“The average household in every income group from top to bottom is seeing its tax burden reduced from the 2013 tax reform package. Just as important, this new round of tax relief follows a 2011 state sales-tax decline that overwhelmingly favored lower- and middle-income taxpayers.”
In other words, after fighting for a 2011 sales-tax rate reduction that primarily benefited lower- and middle-income taxpayers, the Republican-led General Assembly adopted a tax reform package in 2013 that reduced tax burdens for every income group — including the lower- and middle-income households.
Neither the editorial writer nor the syndicated columnist took note of that information.
Let’s be clear about the primary objection to this misreading — either sloppy or deliberate — of the John Locke Foundation’s news release. The objection has nothing to do with criticism of JLF researchers’ findings. Political writers operate well within their professional spheres when they question the conclusions of JLF’s reports or the methodology used to reach those conclusions. My colleagues stand behind their work and are happy to defend it.
But these newspaper writers do their readers a disservice when they ignore or misstate the key conclusions from JLF’s work.
In case you’ve missed those conclusions: First, taxpayers in every income category will save tens of millions of dollars because of state tax reforms enacted in North Carolina in 2013. Period.
Second, combining 2013 reforms with a 2011 sales-tax rate reduction pushed by the Republican-led General Assembly, lower- and middle-income households will enjoy annual savings of $682 million.
And yes, both items will be on the test.
Mitch Kokai is associate editor of Carolina Journal.