Death to the Alternative Minimum Tax!

The dis-oriented author is not a rich man. I have eight children,  I drive old cars and my family survives on my income while my wife stays home with our kids. Now, I do not want to seem ungrateful for what I have but I am definitely not rich. Yet every year at tax time, the government tries to tell me that I am rich.

For the last several years, I have had to pay the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT).

The AMT was enacted in 1969 to prevent a small number of rich individuals from using loopholes in the tax code to prevent paying any taxes. The problem with the AMT is twofold: first it did nothing to address the so-called loopholes, second it was originally targeted at a small number of super-rich individuals.

The New York Times predicts that by 2010, the AMT will apply to 30,000,000 taxpayers! The AMT has not been indexed for inflation so it now affects not just the super-rich but the middle class.

Congress is currently considering a fix to the AMT. Congressional Republicans want to simply remove the AMT while Democrats want to increase certain taxes on the wealthy to offset the cost of reducing or deleting the AMT.

Democrats look at the cost of a Tax cut while Republicans look at the cost of a tax. As a tax payer, I am concerned about the cost of a tax. As for the cost of a tax cut, I say, cut the tax and let the government clip coupons, let the government drive old cars, let the government take vacations closer to home. The American people, the middle class, have been suffering under taxes like the AMT, let the government look at trimming extraneous expenses instead.

Death to the AMT.