The far-left New York Times was forced to issue a massive and humiliating correction in a piece that was obviously meant to scare middle-class families into believing President Trump’s recently passed tax plan would explode their tax liability.

To prove that Trump’s tax cuts would, in fact, increase taxes on the middle class, the Times made up an imaginary family and created an interactive showcase article that included this family’s imaginary tax returns. The only problem is that the Times got the math wrong.

The Times announced, “2018’s Bottom Line,” adding, “The family would owe $3,896 more in taxes under the new tax law.”

Two weeks later, the Wall Street Journal reported, the Times was forced to crawl back and add the kind of correction that is, in reality, a full-blown retraction:

An earlier version of this article incorrectly described the probable effect of the new tax law on a hypothetical couple’s 2018 tax bill. The TurboTax “What-If Worksheet” that generated the projection for their 2018 taxes failed to indicate that the couple would probably be entitled to claim a sizable deduction for income earned from consulting. As a result of that deduction, the amount they would likely owe on taxes would decline by $43, not rise by $3,896.

Even with this correction, WSJ reports, Daniel Hemel, who teaches tax law at the University of Chicago, says the Times still got it wrong — that there are still more savings for this imaginary family (Sam and Felicity Taxpayer) to take advantage of.

“Still don’t see why Samuel & Felicity aren’t claiming nonrefundable dependent credits of $500 for their children Luke & Heidi and their parent Sydney, for additional tax savings of $1500 under the new law,” Hemel tweeted.

The real bottom line here is that as hard as the Times tried to rig the game with an imaginary family manufactured for the express purpose of criticizing the tax law, the Gray Lady still blew it — which proves that the Times does not have the experts or the expertise on hand to accurately report on the issue.

All that effort to craft a hit piece and no one to do the actual math.

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