In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s tax day once again. (Very likely the least popular holiday in the United States and nobody gets a Hallmark card for it.) So how did the tax situation work out for you? To listen to the Democrats out on the campaign trail, you might be led to believe that you paid more taxes in 2018. We see that message reinforced on cable news discussion panels on a weekly basis. But now, long after that talking point has been baked into the cake, the New York Times has come out with a depressing admission. Almost all of you probably got a tax cut.Trump Gave Most Americans A Tax Cut And They Didn’t Notice
Ever since President Trump signed the Republican-sponsored tax bill in December 2017, independent analyses have consistently found that a large majority of Americans would owe less because of the law. Preliminary data based on tax filings has shown the same.This is yet another case of perception trumping reality. The Gray Lady’s own polling shows that the liberal messaging war about how the tax cuts only benefitted the wealthy has really sunk in. Only 20% of respondents were “certain” that they’d gotten a tax cut. (The number is closer to 70%.) Of course, the New York Times hasn’t done much to correct these falsehoods until now, so it’s no wonder there are so many misconceptions.
Yet as the first tax filing season under the new law wraps up on Monday, taxpayers are skeptical. A survey conducted in early April for The New York Times by the online research platform SurveyMonkey found that just 40 percent of Americans believed they had received a tax cut under the law. Just 20 percent were certain they had done so. That’s consistent with previous polls finding that most Americans felt they hadn’t gotten a tax cut, and that a large minority thought their taxes had risen — though not even one in 10 households actually got a tax increase.
To a large degree, the gap between perception and reality on the tax cuts appears to flow from a sustained — and misleading — effort by liberal opponents of the law to brand it as a broad middle-class tax increase.
“The Democrats really outmaneuvered the Republicans by convincing the American people that the main thrust of the tax reform package was to cut taxes for the wealthy,” said Dan Eberhart, a major Republican donor who runs the drilling services company Canary, LLC. Republicans “failed to fully explain the success to voters.”Not only did liberals and the MSM convince a majority of Americans they were getting a tax increase instead of a tax cut, they are openly bragging about getting away with the deception:
Trump is going to try again on Monday when he goes to Minnesota, a potential swing state in the 2020 election, to promote what Republicans consider their signature legislative achievement. It’s part of a week of events designed to promote the tax law’s effects on the economy as he turns to his next campaign…
“It was too small an amount for most to notice,” he said. Adding to voters’ frustration, their tax refunds were smaller than expected, down about 1.1 percent overall, but still noticeable to individual households.
White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett on Friday dismissed poor poll results, saying that they might be explained by general frustration with the tax system broadly. He cited other data, such as the Michigan survey of consumer sentiment, that “suggest that you should have a very optimistic outlook for economic growth this year.”
Nobody likes to give themselves credit for this kind of messaging success, but progressive groups did a really good job of convincing people that Trump raised their taxes when the facts say a clear majority got a tax cut. https://t.co/tcZFr8l9Ck— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) April 8, 2019
Never believe content from the NYT, WaPoo or CNN. They lie to you constantly. If they tell you the sky is blue, get outside and check.
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