Free Republic

Here's an idea: Let's devise a politically inept income tax policy. We'll begin by eliminating tax breaks people have been accustomed to for decades, such as those for qualified retirement accounts, and state and local taxes. Next, we'll negate the child tax credit so that families with young children will be hit especially hard. Then, we won't adjust for inflation, so that our tax will affect more people each year as their incomes grow along with the economy and inflation. We'll tell people that they must calculate their taxes twice, using two different formulas -- and finally we'll add insult...

Washington will soon be taking back a good chunk of that new tax cut. How? By using the sneakiest trap it's got: the Alternative Minimum Tax. There will probably come a time in the next few weeks when you'll look at your paycheck, notice that the take-home dollar amount is a little bit higher and the "federal withholding" amount is a little lower, and you'll experience a feeling of contentment. It's been a hard year. The economy stinks, your property taxes have gone way up, as have your state and local taxes, and your kids' college tuition ... no, let's...

The Lonely Crusade Eight years ago, Congressman Richard Neal (D-Massachusetts) was walking down Main Street in his hometown of Springfield when an accountant changed his life. Rick Moriarty, a local CPA, pulled Neal aside to complain about a terrible injustice called the alternative minimum tax that was forcing middle-class families all over town to pay extra taxes to Uncle Sam. Only rich people were supposed to pay the AMT, but salesmen and computer engineers were getting caught too. Neal began to receive angry letters on the subject from other AMT victims as well, none of them wealthy. Then, when he...

After six years of planning, and three name and two profile changes, the U.S. Army will submit plans May 24 for a new transport aircraft due in service by 2008, say Army aviation officials. Meanwhile, the U.S Marine Corps and Air Force Special Operations continue testing of the overhauled V-22 Osprey tiltrotor.The Army's newest transport vehicle idea, the Air-Maneuver and Transport (AMT) aircraft, would carry 20 tons and be capable of flying 310 miles round trip. AMT’s hefty cargo capacity would let it haul one land vehicle of the Future Combat System (FCS), the next generation of air and ground...

The Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) should be repealed, according to Bruce Bartlett. Initially imposed by liberals in 1969 as a "soak the rich" tax scheme, the AMT forces tax payers to calculate their income taxes twice: first under the regular income tax and again under the AMT. Whichever yields the higher tax is the one that must be paid. Legitimate deductions, such as the personal exemption and payments for state and local taxes, are disallowed under the AMT, and incomes are taxed at either 26% or 28%. These rates are much higher than those of the regular income tax for...

One learns over the years not to get too excited about any proposal coming from Washington that seems like a good thing. One must wait for the dust to settle, read the text, examine the fine print, and generally look past the sloganeering. The Bush tax cut is a good example. The more we know, the more suspicious we become. Bush may be the biggest big-government president ever, but his tax-cut proposal has bought him time. It seems that he wants to step up the timetable for implementing his last tax cuts (only now is the word getting out...

April 29 2002, 8:45 a.m. The out-of-control AMT is punishing middle-class tax payers. In January 17, 1969, Democrat Lyndon Johnson's last Treasury Secretary, Joseph Barr, testified before the Joint Economic Committee on the growth of tax expenditures. In passing, he noted that 155 Americans with incomes above $200,000 in 1967 paid no federal income taxes that year. Twenty-one of them had incomes above $1 million. The respective income thresholds would be $1.1 million and $5.3 million in today's dollars. The important point Mr. Barr made was that what these people did was perfectly legal. They weren't scofflaws or tax evaders....

<p>SOME days, Nina Doherty worries that the Internal Revenue Service is going to seize her house. She owes them over $100,000 because of the alternative minimum tax, known as the AMT.</p> <p>"The IRS has sent me a letter more than once saying that they may put a lien on my house so that's certainly a possibility," Doherty said.</p>