April 20, 2012
Politicians always like to give things to small businesses (many of which seem to be quite large). While the economics makes no sense, there is great politics to taxing workers to give even the most incompetent, greedy and corrupt people money, if they happen to own a business.
This is fairly obviously the logic of a Republican tax cut bill approved by the House which would give some small businesses a tax cut of 20 percent. While the bill was obviously a political gesture in an election year, since there was no chance that the Senate would approve it or that President Obama would sign it, it still may have been useful for the media to provide some explanation of what the bill would do.
The Post failed in this task, most importantly by not pointing out that the bill would only reduce taxes on businesses that are incorporated as separate entities and therefore pay the corporate income tax. This is important because the vast majority of small businesses are proprietorships or partnerships that do not pay the corporate income tax. These small businesses would not benefit from the Republican tax cut.
Comments