Posted on 12/12/2007 1:03:24 PM PST by SmithL
The Alternative Minimum Tax may be the all-time winner of Good Ideas Gone Bad award. Written to make sure tax-dodgers didn't pile up deductions to escape the IRS, it's now threatening to sweep in 25 million taxpayers, up from four million last year.
This headache of a tax grew in scope thanks to inflation and rising incomes as lower-earners graduated into a higher tier. But it's also provided a stage for Congress to display a knack for feuding instead of fixing. The result could be a longer tax season, ample confusion and deepening voter resentment.
Since it was passed in 1969, the tax has needed 14 adjustments to keep it zeroed in on wealthy taxpayers, not middle-income earners who now find themselves in its gunsights. With minimal pain and fighting, this job got done.
But not this year. Democrats want to stick by their "pay as you go" pledge to make up any tax cuts with new revenue or program cuts. Trimming back the ever-rising AMT comes with $50 billion loss to the treasury, and the House passed tax increases on super-wealthy investors and money managers to plug this hole.
The GOP has stopped this plan in the Senate with the threat of a filibuster. The Republicans' argument: no new taxes should be levied at all to pay for reducing the AMT's sweep. President Bush agrees.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Alt: (NO tax) policy
Let’s not be naive. The pretence was that it was intended to tax wealthy tax dodgers. But the reality was far otherwise, even at the start.
Those wealthy tax dodgers are exactly the guys who can afford offshore trusts and expensive tax lawyers. Teresa Heinz Kerry paid lower rates on her huge income than most of us do on our moderate ones, and so do most of the billionaire leftists who support the Democrat tax grubbers.
It was no mistake. It was exactly what bill clinton wanted. And although Bush gave us some very nice tax cuts, one of the best things he did, he never really made an effort to roll back the AMT, because it was just too good at sucking up money from ordinary taxpayers for all the expensive things he added to federal spending.
Yep! It was Bush’s fault by god. Naive indeed.
What a dishonest statement. Democrats want to use the AMT fix as an excuse to raise taxes. The AMT was not meant to reach the taxpayers it is now reaching due to a drafting error (it was not tied to inflation), and thus the government is not and never was entitled to the money from those taxpayers and there is no reason to pay for it by raising taxes since it was never entitled to those tax revenues to begin with.
Well, the AMT was clinton’s fault. But Bush put repealing it on the back burner, I THINK because he figured it would be impossible to get the votes to put it through congress. It was very popular with politicians because it produced a lot of money.
As it was, he did manage to get quite a lot of cuts through, and he gave us the only meaningful tax reduction since Reagan. But the AMT never was touched.
Do you think it was an error not to allow for inflation? I think it was deliberate, precisely because it gives congress constant opportunities to pretend to “cut” taxes and make them more “fair,” while actually letting them rise.
Both the AMT and income tax were populist snake oil schemes designed to punish the rich. When will we learn? Probably never because human nature does not change.
When you listen to Charlie Wrangler, this point becomes perfectly clear.
When you listen to Charlie Wrangler, this point becomes perfectly clear.
“The power to tax is the power to destroy.”
Resentment is a powerful motivator of “progressive” politics.
The trick is to convince the voters that they are punishing someone else, while in actuality they are punishing themselves. Even those who pay littlel or no taxes are punishing themselves, since a burdened economy sheds entry level jobs.
The AMT started 1969.
It has been everyone in power’s fault since.
Yes. You are quite right. Clinton tacked on a few percent when he hiked taxes. I misremembered.
The answer is clear:
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