Telling Stories With Tax Data

"Torture numbers, and they'll confess to anything."
-- Gregg Easterbrook

Did you just finish wrestling with your income tax forms April 15? Don't take too much time to catch your breath. Richardson has a bond election coming up May 8. Various claims about the impact on your property taxes are making the rounds in the blogosphere. Let's try to wrestle some of them to the ground.

After the jump, how the same data can tell two different stories.

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One local blog, Just My 2 Cents Worth, makes the claim that taxes in Richardson are skyrocketing:

"The City of Richardson has been increasing the tax rate at a faster rate than any other Dallas County city, with the one exception being the city of Lancaster. How do you feel about how Richardson's very own 'Tax and Spend' liberals are increasing your taxes at almost the fastest rate in all of Dallas county?"

He supports his claim with this table, based on data from the Dallas Central Appraisal District:

Another blog, RumorCheck.org, using the very same data, reaches a much less alarming conclusion:

"Richardson was 9th out of 25 in terms of the increase of the actual tax burden on the 'average' residence, and the tax burden increased 87.47% over the ten year period. Note that the average increase in the average tax burden for all 25 cities was 68.58%."

He supports his own claim with this table, based on data from the same Dallas Central Appraisal District:

So, which claim is the truth? Well, they both are. The first blogger variously uses "tax rate" and "taxes" as synonyms, but his data is for tax rates. The second blogger points out that the check that homeowners write to the city each year is calculated on both the tax rate and the taxable value of their property. He suggests that you should consider the actual taxes paid and not just the tax rate used as part of the calculation.

The first blogger is right in saying that Richardson's tax rate went up 10x the average of cities in the Dallas area over the last ten years. The second blogger is right that the increase in the average homeowner's tax burden is 1.3x the county average, much less than the 10x the tax rate increased.

Also, the first blogger is right in saying that Richardson's tax rate increased more than all but one city (Lancaster) in the last ten years. The second blogger is right that the increase in Richardson's tax burden for the average homeowner was ninth out of 25 cities, not second.

Which blogger you "believe" is probably determined by which side of the argument you were predisposed to accept to begin with. As for me, I'm predisposed to favor the bond election, but I understand that both bloggers are correct in what they say. I also understand that I need to look elsewhere, at what they don't say, to find compelling arguments either in favor or against this bond election.

P.S. No numbers were harmed during the production of this blog.