Your Stolen Tax Records Are News

ProPublica soiled itself with the gimmicky use it made of personal tax data.

By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.. Excerpts:

"This rationalization comes down to a conceit: a taxpayer’s actual payment in a given year, which ProPublica extracts from the stolen returns, compared against their Forbes unrealized gains reveals what “we’re going to call . . . their true tax rate.”

This is a misuse of the word “true.” So Jeff Bezos paid a tax rate of just 0.98% during years when he paid taxes of $973 million because the unrealized appreciation of his Amazon shares was $99 billion. Follow-up press reports all trumpeted this 0.98% “true” rate but it’s a hypothetical rate based on a hypothetical change in the tax code. At least engage in the thought experiment honestly and recognize that such a tax would also affect the market value of his shares. ProPublica doesn’t because the true tax rate is just a contrivance thrown in to give a role to the stolen documents.

ProPublica’s outgoing chief Richard Tofel claims the piece is “the most important story we have ever published. . . . The findings are extraordinary.”

A more cogent reaction was that of economist and blogger Tyler Cowen : “ProPublica acted unethically, and in fact nothing fundamentally new or interesting or surprising was learned from their act as accessory” to data theft."