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How to ACTUALLY Do Your Own Research

Why should you listen to me? Well, I have an MA in English, was a professional journalist for a number of years, taught critical thinking in college, and I have robust personal background that spans a lot of professions that involve politicians and local, state, and federal procedures.

Let’s get going


Let’s pick an article – here’s my current favorite news item, no paywall: House GOP Bill Aims to Abolish the IRS and Rewrite the Tax Code

Do a quick scan

So, who published it? Kiplinger. I personally know nothing about Kiplinger, so I’m going to first check to see if I should trust anything they write.

  • Quickly suss out the main website – seems to be a basic finance blog, nothing incindiary or fancy, but also not super mainstream looking from the layout
  • Check MediaBias/FactCheck: pretty neutral on the bias
  • Check Wikipedia: I mean, it has an entry, and it’s not satire, in fact it seems to have a storied career as trying to do the right thing. Checking ownership, nothing worrisome.

Next up, let’s look at that headline: “House GOP Bill Aims to Abolish the IRS and Rewrite the Tax Code.”

Time to ask myself some questions:

  • House GOP Bill – so it’s the House introducing it, and from what I know about American politics, the House is pretty easy to get stuff introduced. The Senate is really where serious stuff originates. And did the GOP introduce it en masse, or is it one person or a bunch of people?
  • Aims to Abolish the IRS and Rewrite the Tax Code – so I like this one better than most articles about this topic, because it isn’t just click bait with the first part, but gives us a bit more context: they have a goal to clean up the IRS process. I’m a business owner and a tax payer, and those rules are convoluted and opaque to normal people. I know how much I have to pay my CPA to file and I would honestly love to see things revised, so . . . cool, let’s dive in.

Into the Meat

  • “The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives and Senate could spell disaster for the future of the IRS.”
    • Oof, that’s not a good way to start an unbiased piece of reporting. The headline was the GOP in the House doing this, but suddenly we’re including the Senate and we’re applying a judgement of “disaster” to the IRS. – THIS REALLY SENDS MY WARNING FLAGS UP THAT IT’S TIME TO DO MORE RESEARCH.
  • “The proposal, spearheaded by Rep. Earl L. “Buddy” Carter (R-GA), would dismantle the current federal tax code and replace it with a single national sales tax. That “consumption tax” would be paid by everyone in the country, including illegal immigrants.”
    • Oof again – we’re going to look into Mr Buddy here in a second, but I do like the meat of the point. I’ve got questions about the consumption tax, but why are we tacking on, “would be paid by everyone in the country, including illegal immigrants.” If the author was so unbiased, they wouldn’t use that phrase, they’d use “undocumented immigrants.” And also, I’m going to infer that she added that in there to be like, “See, anyone buying anything from the US will pay the tax” which I take also to mean our large tourist trade, our H1B visa folks, etc. This is interesting to me, I want to learn more, but my spidey senses are up that she’s got an agenda, and so does Kiplinger’s.
  • Let’s go take a look at Buddy a second – is he a crack pot, a visionary?
    • I’m going to hop on over to Wikipedia to see what we’ve got.
      • He’s been serving for 10 years in the House of Reps. Couple things here – if you’re a super serious politician, you try to move into the Senate from the House. I don’t know what’s stopping him, but that’s something I’m going to remember.
      • He introduced a bit of legislature that would help his profession, but he’s also pretty straight about noting it was a borderline benefit to him. I’m cool with that. He sees an problem in his industry, why not be the person to fix it.
      • Okay, but as I read this – it says he ran for the US State Senate in 2014 with this detailed history. I sat there looking at this and the little chart on the right trying to make sense of it – is he in the Senate or the House? His website says he’s a Rep, so it’s House. Facepalm – Wikipedia is wrong, too.
      • Here’s the meat I was looking for: “Carter voted for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, saying he believed it would make businesses in his district more competitive in a global market. He also said it would help his constituents earn and/or save more money. Carter is a sponsor of “H.R.25 The FairTax Act of 2023” which would abolish the current US tax structure and replace it with a yearly adjustable variable “national sales tax” (value-added tax) starting at 23% in 2025 to be administered by the states and remitted to the Treasury of the United States.”
        • So he’s been doing this a long time. He tries often. It’s been an idea he’s been pushing forever. But it never made it anywhere. Still curious about it, but let’s get back to the point of the article.
    • Main conclusion so far: this article isn’t pointing out something revolutionary that hasn’t been done before – and it hasn’t passed before.

Not Worth Spending Any More Time on This

So I literally got three paragraphs into this article and discovered that I don’t trust the author, and that this article is basically click bait because it’s not going to go anywhere, but isn’t it pretty to think so?

How long did it take me to do this? Maybe fifteen minutes. But now I’m not going to share this thing, or take it seriously, or give it rent in my head. That’s priceless.

I dare you to try it with the next article you find that makes you feel a certain way.

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Kristin Tara Horowitz

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