A Big Lie I'm getting really tired of hearing

"Obama wants to take your tax money and give it to people who don't pay taxes."

This is a fairly new one, so I might be going out on a limb by ascribing Big Lie status to it already. But I've been hearing it a lot lately, often from people who really ought to know better — people who are usually good at math, like Dave Ramsey.

The problem is, it's not true. Or rather, it's only true if you accept an unreasonably narrow definition of "paying taxes."

It's true that Obama's tax plan would give a refundable tax credit to some people who make too little to pay federal income tax. But those people still pay Social Security payroll taxes, so it's not true that they pay no federal taxes. They also pay state and local sales taxes, and sometimes state income tax as well.