South By North Strategies, Ltd.

Over at Economist’s View, Mark Thoma asks if the popular misperception that federal income taxes have risen is due to the Obama administration being too clever for its own good.

This is partly the administration’s own doing. There is a theory that says people will spend more of their tax cuts if they are unaware that they have happened, so the administration decided not to publicize the tax cut portion of the stimulus bill.
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This was successful in that people were (and are) generally unaware that 40% of the stimulus package came as tax cuts. And some of this money was spent and that helped to stimulate aggregate demand. But it was politically unsuccessful for two reasons. First, as documented above, many people believe taxes have increased when, in fact, they have decreased for most taxpayers. Second, the administration has not been able to take credit for the stimulus that resulted from the tax cuts (and the criticism over the government spending portion of the stimulus package generally fails to recognize the large component of the package due to tax cuts).
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My view is that the attempt to hide the tax cut from consumers wasn’t needed. This was a balance sheet recession — consumers took huge hits to the value of their houses and retirement savings — and consumers aren’t going to go back to their usual consumption habits until the balance sheets are repaired. The faster that balance sheets are repaired, and tax cuts can help with that, the faster that consumers will return to normal levels of consumption. That means saving is needed, not consumption, and attempts to hide tax cuts from consumers and fool them into doing the opposite, consuming rather than saving. That would not be their first choice if they were fully informed.