This Tax Time Made Easier by a Devotion to Baseball

Summer is the beginning of a special "tax time" – when units of government everywhere ponder their budgets for the next year.

Even some state legislatures (e.g., Illinois, Indiana) that should have finished this business in the spring are still trying to figure it out.

Unfortunately, some math-challenged journalists never will.

As Illinois considers increasing the state income tax to 4.5 percent – from 3 percent – some reporter somewhere in the Land of Lincoln will report (or already has) that as an increase of 1.5 percent. Of course, it's really 50 percent – the increase (1.5 percentage points) being half (50 percent) of the starting number (3 percent).

That error is common when journalists report numbers.

During his annual fishin' trip up north, Mose recently had the opportunity to read the Pioneer Press of St. Paul, Minn. This was the lead paragraph of a Page 1 story on June 30:

Minnesotans will get nipped by two tax increases beginning Wednesday – a three-eighths of 1 percent boost in the sales tax and a 1.6 cents per gallon gasoline surcharge.

This paragraph came later:

The sales tax increase raises the statewide rate from 6.5 percent to 6.875 percent, or 15 cents on a $40 purchase.

Now that we know what the tax was (6.5 percent), we can correctly figure the percentage increase:

1) The increase is three-eighths percentage points, not three-eighths percent.

2) The percentage increase is really 5.77 percent – the increase (0.375 percentage points) being a bit more than one-twentieth (which would be 5 percent) of the starting number (6.5 percent). It's closer to one-seventeenth.

We baseball fans who have forever figured batting averages know that stuff, as Mose explained recently in his essay about a 1956 baseball card.

Yes, baseball can teach valuable lessons.

Play ball!