Speaking of crummy tax numbers, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities catches the Tax Freedom folks touting the 20.2 percent "average federal tax rate." That's all well and good, except this is one of those times when average" means "less than 20 percent of the population." As the CBPP points out, the CBO data shows that more than 80 percent of taxpayers pay less than 20.2 percent. As a general rule, anytime someone uses an "average" when their data would be better expressed in terms of "median," it's time to get suspicious.
