&gt; I&#x27;m ignoring the portions of your comments that don&#x27;t pertain to my question.<p>To answer to your question yet again: &quot;the net result is that you&#x27;re raising taxes, but making it look like you&#x27;re decreasing expenses instead.&quot;  Removing a tax exemption is a tax increase, and granting one is a tax decrease; paying collected funds out is an expense, and not doing so removes an expense.  They&#x27;re on opposite sides of the balance sheet, and there&#x27;s a meaningful difference between them even if the balance sheet adds up to the same value.<p>See previous comments for a more detailed explanation for why the way the article applies that particular spin comes across as &quot;disturbing&quot;, which is what you specifically asked for an explanation of.  You&#x27;re not going to get an apolitical answer to that question, because it&#x27;s a political question.