Does NYT Twist Data: Economic spin?

The New York Times has to work very hard to make the performance of the economy during the past few years look bad. This morning, David Cay Johnston did his part.

Bear with the technical stuff for a bit; the meat will arrive shortly.

Every year, the IRS publishes information about the tax returns it received in the second preceding year.

2005's tax-return data was released yesterday (data referred to here is not linked because it is in PDFs and Excel files; anyone who wants to see the underlying data can e-mail me). Among the stats the IRS produces is one with the confusing name of "Adjusted Gross Income Less Deficit." I will call it "Revised AGI" for this post. "Revised AGI" adds a long list of items back to taxpayers' reported Adjusted Gross Income (the number at the bottom of Page 1 of the long-form 1040) in an attempt to approximate taxpayers' total income, whether it is taxed or not.