I mean, the little cartoon meter is pretty arbitrary. What’s the difference between half true and mostly true? Those two phrases seem mostly equivalent to me.
But the more important thing is the analyses I think, they are quite similar in content. And raise the same caveat about the civil war taxes. These fact checks were 3 years apart, so it may be completely different groups of people writing these fact checks. Yet, they both arrive at similar conclusions with slightly different language. I’d say that’s an okay result.
To me the main issue would be that an income tax prior to 1913 were temporary taxes. Technically, yes they were based on income. But when we talk about income taxes today, we don’t talk about them as necessary tools to generate revenue in support of a war that would have an end date.
It wasn’t a permanent fixture. Today it’s a permanent fixture and short of one of the Paul clan winning the office, it will continue into the foreseeable future.
This statement "We did not even have a federal income tax in this country until 1913." was rated "mostly true"[0]
While this one "the U.S. federal income tax rate was 0 percent until 1913." was rated "half true"[1]
What more evidence do you need that this whole thing is sort of arbitrary?
[0]https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/aug/24/jim-webb/j...
[1]https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2012/jan/31/ron-paul/r...