Dennis Hastert, accounting wizard: “Well, folks, if you earn $40,000 a year and have a family of two, you don’t pay any taxes. So you probably, if you don’t pay any taxes, you are not going to get a big tax cut.” Bet a lot of people would be happy if this were actually true.
Late Update: Folks are writing in to say that a married couple with two children would not, in fact, pay any federal income tax. Just, you know, all kinds of other taxes. Fair enough, but that’s obviously not the same as saying a family of two doesn’t pay any taxes, at least under standard uses of the word “any.” I mean, under this construal Hastert’s trying to justify a tax cut that gives a giant share of its benefits to the rich with the rationale that . . . the tax he’s trying to cut is disproportionately paid by the rich.
Later Update: Now I’m getting other accounts indicating that a married couple with two children would pay federal income tax after all. Some correspondents indicate that this may depend on whether or not you live in a state with a state-level EITC. Others are also noting that a married couple with two kids is what we ordinarily call a “family of four” rather than a “family of two.” Be all this as it may, the point remains the same — families of two or four making $40k pay taxes, plenty of taxes, and if Hastert doesn’t know that he desperately needs to get out more.
