The Times Should Explain Marginal Tax Rates - Repeatedly, if Necessary

Now that Thanksgiving is over, isn't it time to turn our attention from turkey, parades and football to, well, marginal tax rates?

A number of Times readers think it's high time.

They were disturbed last week when a Business Day story quoted â€" and didn't challenge the thinking of - small-business owners who didn't seem to understand how marginal tax rates work. Under a headline that read, “Investors Rush to Beat Threat of Higher Taxes,” the article quoted a chiropractor in McLean, Va., saying that she and her husband planned to monitor the business income from their joint practice to avoid crossing a threshold for higher taxes. She appeared to believe that if the income went over “the cutoff line,” that all of their income would be taxed at a higher rate. That's not the case. Only the amount over the limit is taxed at the higher rate.

The Times, these readers say, shouldn't let inaccurate thinking go unchallenged - any time it appears.

Le n Charlap, a reader from Princeton, N.J., put it this way: “You know what marginal rates are. It is your obligation to explain this your readers, many of whom do not or forget to apply that knowledge.”

And The Times took a hit from Jason Linkins in The Huffington Post. He called it “the sort of innumeracy that spreads casually, in minor articles such as this piece in The Times, where this aggravating ignorance somehow manages to find its way into the copy.” The misunderstanding, he claimed, “could spread like a supervirus.”

“There are not ‘two sides' to this issue,” Mr. Linkins summed up. “You either understand how marginal tax rates work or you do not, and reporters are absolutely allowed to point out who is right and who is wrong.”

Lawrence Ingrassia, the business editor of The Times, called this complaint “a fair point.” He said that The Times should do a better job of making clear how marginal tax rates work. “We'll keep that in mind going forward.”

There is a need to be precise, he said. But the broader point of the article, and others like it, “that some people may change their economic behavior based on tax policies is a reasonable one to write about, even if some people think that it won't because it adheres to their political leanings.”

He noted that an article the following day explained marginal tax rates and their consequences.

I've written in the past about fact-checking, and the growing desire by readers to have The Times, and other news organizations, clearly state established truths, even when there is a countervailing opinion. That principle applies to this subject, too.

When someone gets it wrong, The Times has an obligation to set the record straight, right then and there.