The following exchange drew laughs at Friday night’s Presidential debate:

• Sen. Kerry: The president got $84 from a timber company that owns, and he’s counted as a small business. Dick Cheney’s counted as a small business. That’s how they do things. That’s just not right.
• Pres. Bush: I own a timber company? That’s news to me. Need some wood?

The nonpartisan Factcheck.org gives this round to Sen. Kerry:

[A]ccording to his 2003 financial disclosure form, Bush does own part interest in “LSTF, LLC”, a limited-liability company organized “for the purpose of the production of trees for commercial sales.”

So Bush was wrong to suggest that he doesn’t have ownership of a timber company. And Kerry was correct in saying that Bush’s definition of “small business” is so broad that Bush himself would have qualified as a “small business” in 2001 by virtue of the $84 in business income.

Kerry got his information from an article we posted Sept. 23 stating that Bush on his 2001 federal income tax returns “reported $84 of business income from his part ownership of a timber-growing enterprise.” We should clarify: the $84 in Schedule C income was from Bush’s Lone Star Trust, which is actually described on the 2001 income-tax returns as an “oil and gas production” business. The Lone Star Trust now owns 50% of the tree-growing company, but didn’t get into that business until two years after the $84 in question. So we should have described the $84 as coming from an “oil and gas” business in 2001, and will amend that in our earlier article.