Hightower Lowdown

You've gotta love the consistency of the Bushites. When they ram through tax "reforms," it's the superrich and corporations that gain. And when they unleash their IRS to look into tax cheating, they don't probe the tax shelters of millionaires or the multibillion-dollar offshore tax havens of corporate finaglers. Instead, they go after the working poor. Some 1.6 million low-income workers have not only had their tax refunds frozen in the past five years but also have had their tax filings officially labeled "fraudulent" by the IRS. This crackdown on the poor has allowed Bush to claim that, by golly, he's tough on tax fraud.

But the IRS's own inhouse taxpayer advocate, Nina Olson, says that twothirds of those folks were entitled either to the tax credit they sought or to even more money. Another 14% were due at least a partial refund, and of the remaining 20%, almost none had committed fraud. They had simply been confused by the complicated tax forms and made honest errors.

By the way, the average income of these supposed tax deadbeats was only $13,000. The great majority were working parents who were using the earnedincome tax credit, which was first advocated by the laissez-faire guru Milton Friedman and first implemented by Ronnie Reagan.