Skip to main content

PeakMetrics / Fact Checks

Economy & business fact checks

Explore claims publishers have checked about economy & business. Read their original ratings and follow the evidence.

7,099 published reviews in this topic

Deutsche Presse-AgenturEconomy & business

Die Corona-Pandemie trifft die Wirtschaft in den USA hart. Ein im Netz publizierter Artikel von «AnderweltOnline.com» behauptet in diesem Zusammenhang: «Donald Trump verbietet Lohnsteuer». Sogar vom «Ende des bestehenden Finanz- und Wirtschaftssystems» ist die Rede. Denn angeblich habe der US-Präsident «die Lohnsteuer für Einkommen unter 100 000 US-Dollar komplett abgeschafft», um die Bürger zu entlasten.

Publisher’s rating: Donald Trump hat in den USA nicht die Lohnsteuer abgeschafft, sondern einem Teil der Bevölkerung Erleichterungen bei den Sozialabgaben in Aussicht gestellt. Zudem geht es bisher nur um den Aufschub, nicht um den Erlass der Zahlungen - zum Beispiel für Rente oder Krankenversicherung, die sogenannten «payroll taxes».

The claim concerns a specific measure President Donald Trump announced in August 2020: that he had abolished payroll taxes for people earning below $100,000. The review distinguishes payroll taxes from income tax, noting that the former refer to contributions for programs such as retirement, unemployment and health insurance. It says the AnderweltOnline article presented the measure as a complete end to the tax, but the described action was instead a deferral of certain payments. The review traces the announcement to Trump’s August 8, 2020 press conference, after negotiations on a pandemic stimulus package in Congress had failed. It reports that Trump directed employers not to remit the employee portion of the relevant contributions through the end of that year for workers whose income was below roughly $100,000. The article quotes Trump describing the proposal as a “payroll tax holiday” for Americans earning less than that amount, and says he issued a directive to the Treasury Department the same day. The central distinction is between postponing payments and canceling them. According to the review, under the law then in force, affected workers still had to expect to repay the deferred contributions later; the Treasury Department was asked to examine possible alternatives. Trump also mentioned possible future cuts to income and capital-gains taxes, but the review says those were separate proposals, not evidence that payroll taxes had already been abolished. It further notes that measures affecting taxes and contributions required congressional approval, so implementation was uncertain.

FACTLYEconomy & business

Excerpts from the book – ‘Advice and Dissent: My Life in Public Service’, an autobiography of former RBI Governor Y. V. Reddy

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

FACTLY examined a social-media post that attributed a series of statements about India’s economic crisis, gold shipments and the Bofors arms contract to former RBI Governor Y. V. Reddy’s autobiography, Advice and Dissent. The review compared the post’s wording with excerpts from the book and concluded that most of the post’s quotations were exaggerated or presented outside their original context, with some factual errors. One example concerns the 1991 gold shipment. The post said the RBI pledged gold to raise only Rs 40 crore, while the passage FACTLY quoted from the book says the shipment of 47 tonnes raised $405 million. FACTLY also found that Reddy’s account of Bofors concerned exploring whether payments could be delayed for temporary financial relief; it did not describe a brokerage leak. And while the book does describe a tyre puncture during the gold transport, the review says the post added details—such as old guards and an old van—not found in the quoted passage. A further mismatch is chronological: the post attributes criticism of the Modi government to Reddy, but FACTLY reports that the autobiography ends with his submission of the Fourteenth Finance Commission report in December 2014. That endpoint means the book could not contain the alleged discussion of the later Modi government. These comparisons support the review’s finding that most of the post’s purported excerpts do not accurately represent what the autobiography says.