Some readers are miffed with Chait and coming to Fleischer’s defense:

Your friend, Chait, is being even more dishonest than Fleicher. Ari makes two claims: The poor don’t pay federal income taxes (they didn’t include “income” in the article’s title) and that taxes are progressive. Chait mentions the CBO document to prove the poor pay taxes (4.6% of which ½, or 2.3%, are excise taxes, seems fishy that the homeless are paying half their taxes because of assets in Bermuda or cashing in IRA’s early). If you graph the data in the CBO document you get virtually a straight line between 0% and 31.7%. Then he mentions the Hassett article to prove taxes aren’t progressive when you add in state taxes (at least at the two data points he chose, which approximates the upper middle class 50th percentile to 85th percentile) . Alright, but three paragraphs before Hasset gets into the numbers he writes, “To a large extent, the poor have been taken off the tax rolls altogether…” So one document says the poor pay taxes, but only a little bit because taxes are progressive, then his other article says taxes aren’t progressive, but the poor don’t pay tax. Why does Chair choose two contradictory pieces of evidence to show Ari is dishonest? Furthermore, taxes are flattened between the 50th and 85th percentiles. Are we to believe the poor pay effective tax rates of 26% to the state? The richest 1% pays 32% to the feds. Are we to believe they pay negative 2% to the state? Okay two more points. The states can’t “stick it to” the rich, because they can always leave for a more hospitable state. In effect, market pressures limit the progressivity of state income taxes. Also, I suspect the flattening of taxes for the upper middle class is a product of property taxes. This is also a market force mechanism. As the value of the federal home interest rate deduction increases, the upper middle class my more expensive homes, increasing property taxes.

And:

I read Mr. Chait’s article and I think some of his math is suspect. I found the study referenced in both articles showed Mr. Fleisher was correct. 25-years ago (1982), the top 1 percent was paying 27.7 percent (27.7 is less than 31.1). Maybe Mr Chait needs to check his math, because 25-years ago is 1982 (hello RR) and not 1979 (good-bye Jeemy). Or instead of a math slip, was he just trying to slant the article his way (typical). Also, the balding head crack at the end was just way too low rent and immature.