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The @JesseDrucker article template:
1. Identify tax break
2. Confirm high-income people/corporations receive benefit
3. Intentionally misrepresent material facts
4. Assert corruption
5. Inflame readers sense of outrage
6. Rinse/repeat
THREAD 1/10 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/24/business/tax-breaks-wealthy-virus.html
1. Identify tax break
2. Confirm high-income people/corporations receive benefit
3. Intentionally misrepresent material facts
4. Assert corruption
5. Inflame readers sense of outrage
6. Rinse/repeat
THREAD 1/10 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/24/business/tax-breaks-wealthy-virus.html
MISREPRESENTATION: "One provision... increases the amount of deductions companies are permitted to take on the interest they pay on large quantities of debt. Only companies with at least $25 million in annual receipts can qualify for that break."
2/10
2/10
FACT: "That break" being interest deductions, companies with less than $25m already may deduct their interest FULLY. So smaller companies do, in fact, "qualify" for "that break" -- and in fact may deduct MORE than larger companies.
3/10
3/10
MISREPRESENTATION: "Another change lets people deduct even more of their businesses’ losses from any winnings they reaped in the stock market... Only households earning at least $500,000 a year — the top 1 percent of American taxpayers — are eligible."
4/10
4/10
FACT: Households earning less than $500,000 are, and always have been, able to deduct ALL of their business losses. So yes, the other 99% "are eligible," Mr. Drucker.
5/10
5/10
MISREPRESENTATION: "The biggest tax break permits wealthy investors in, say, the real estate or energy businesses to use only-on-paper financial losses — such as from writing down, or depreciating, the value of assets — to reduce the taxes..."
6/10
6/10
FACT: Depreciation is not an "only-on-paper financial loss." It is a deduction for an expenditure actually made. You may only take a depreciation deduction for money that's gone out the door. That's real, not only-on-paper.
7/10
7/10
And why do you think he wrote "in, say, real estate or energy" when it benefits all industries? Why didn't he write "in, say, retail or manufacturing"? Because he's trying to hook the policy to less popular industries for emotional effect, regardless of the facts?
8/10
8/10
And why does he only mention that losses may offset "capital gains from investments"? Why doesn't he mention that it also may offset salary? Could it be because he is trying to stir populist resentment -- again regardless of the facts?
9/10
9/10
Finally, he discusses NOLs as being used by companies that are "profitable," and then uses GAAP rules as the objective definition of "profitable." But GAAP doesn't measure true economic profit any more than tax accounting does. Both deviate from economic principles.
10/10
10/10
