"Econ4U"

[mmcirvin]

I've been seeing these slides at movie theaters before the film shows for a while now, mentioning this site that has similar quizzes. They're little multiple-choice questions purporting to educate you about economics, but the questions and choices all seem slanted the same way: to make you realize that there are more people who don't pay any income taxes than you thought (poor people are lucky duckies!), that top marginal tax rates were shockingly high before Reagan, that restaurant owners take home a tiny percentage of the take (damn minimum-wage laws!), etc. After seeing a few of them, a definite pattern started to emerge, so I actually looked at the site. The people involved seem to be a collection of corporate bigshots and miscellaneous political conservatives... and George McGovern. I wonder how he got in there.

Comments

[pootrootbeer.livejournal.com]

It's nice that the answer to the first question in the "personal finance" quiz is wrong.

Child support payments ARE SO deductible from federal tax returns, in addition to home mortgage interest.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

At least some of their facts are true, but there's no real context provided, and on a multiple-choice quiz designed to persuade, you can make a number seem high or low by the choice of what wrong answers you display it with.

I actually saw one of the slides score a perfect hit on another viewer while waiting for Kung Fu Hustle to begin. It was the question about what percentage of Americans pay no federal income tax (it said the number was 35%; some of the provided alternatives were in single digits), and when the answer came up, someone in the audience actually angrily shouted "Why aren't they paying any taxes??"

(In most states, they are paying taxes all the time, particularly sales taxes, often car taxes, etc., and these can be a considerable chunk of income if you're living paycheck to paycheck, which you probably are if you pay nothing to the IRS; federal income tax is just the tax you think of as most significant if you're relatively well-off. I'm pretty sure that this conceptual slippage was the one intended. To be fair to them I should say that it worked exactly the opposite way on samantha2074, who was shocked that so many Americans are poor enough to be completely exempt from income tax. The question didn't give a reason, though; it just implanted the idea that there are a lot of freeloaders out there, and I've already seen the "lucky duckies" complaint going around among people who want to flatten out the tax structure.)

According to the IRS

[(Anonymous)]

Child Support Payments Are Not Deductible. The following is from the IRS Website:

"If you pay child support, are you allowed to deduct anything on your taxes or claim the child as an exemption?

Nothing can be deducted for the child support payments. Child support payments are neither deductible by the payer nor taxable income to the payee. You may be able to claim the child as a dependent. Generally, the custodial parent generally is treated as the parent who provided more than half of the child's support. This parent is usually allowed to claim the exemption for the child if the other exemption tests are met. However, the noncustodial parent may be treated as the parent who provided more than half of the child's support if the custodial parent signs a Form 8332 (PDF), Release of Claim to Exemption for Child of Divorced of Separated Parents, or a substantially similar statement. "