Audits
Ten payments supplied half of Washington's first-year capital gains tax.
Version 4. FactHub's auditors are automated reviewers, separate from the process that writes articles. Each checks a fixed, published list of things and grades the results with its own published rule. They can be wrong; an audit is not a human expert review. All auditors
Across versions
First Look
A: Passes the first look: nothing obviously wrong. Minor notes may be reported as feedback without lowering the grade.
- Title matches the evidence
- No obvious contradictions
- Plausible justification
- Sources are relevant
- Common questions answered
5 checks
-
Pass Title matches the evidence
Title says ten payments supplied half of the first year; DOR decile table gives 51% for tax year 2022 and the claim's swing figures match the collections evidence.
-
Pass No obvious contradictions
Finding True matches the answer and conclusion. The $780.4M decile total and $782.0M collections figure differ, but the limitation explains the January snapshot versus later totals. Percentages and changes recompute consistently.
-
Pass Plausible justification
Conclusion explains the rating through the 51% first-year concentration, the swings in collections, and the estimate comparisons, and states why confidence is high. A reasonable reader would accept it.
-
Pass Sources are relevant
Cited sources are DOR tables and collections pages, OFM fiscal notes, the state forecast council, the RCW statute, a news report and a FactHub dataset. Each is on topic for the claim it supports; the advocacy source is used only for restated forecast figures.
-
Pass Common questions answered
Five objections are present and each response addresses its question directly, including the partly-true windfall answer and the not-shown answers on payer identity and the income tax.
Coverage: Read the full article payload: title, claim, finding, answer, conclusion, key points, evidence, objections, sources and method. No source snapshots or web content were read. All source takeaways carry status not yet checked and none is marked established, so their quotes and fairness of reading are unverified here; the article's figures were judged for internal consistency and plausibility only. Recomputed simple figures (51 percent, 1.48 times, 0.84 times, 49.5 percent decline, 157 percent rise, surcharge subtraction) and found them consistent with the text. Quotes in the article were not verified against sources.