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LATEST LETTERS

Alternative minimum tax

Saturday, April 28 at 2:00 PM

Frank Slavick of Superior writes:

The elitists of the Republican party secretly love a tax — the alternative minimum tax, or AMT. Originally intended to make the wealthiest pay something in taxes, next year the AMT will collide with America’s middle class if Congress does not act to stop it. The White House will not support Congress, and will not propagandize against this unjust tax because it means $50 billion a year to help fund Bush’s treasury-draining Iraq war. Since this does not yet impact Bush’s self-acknowledged base of support ("some people call you the elite, I call you my base"), why would there be outrage from this president?

This letter has not been edited.

READER COMMENTS

The AMT began causing problems for the middle class shortly after it was created because it was not indexed to inflation. Nevertheless, the various Congresses have made annual adjustments to exclude large chuncks of the middle class. We got nailed this year with a bit extra tax so I don't think they are tweeking it quite well enough because we are not rich ourselves. Unfortunately, reality is that the Congress and the Administration talk a good line about fixing it permanently but in reality neither want to do so for basically the same reason. To fix it precludes adding in the amount that could potentially be brought into the treaasury in the out years if the AMT was to actually be applied to everyones taxes. That would seriously dent their ability to play around with all the funny money as both sides do now. They'd rather scramble on a year by year basis, tweeking around the edges, in order to keep those tens of billions in the budget outyears. It's all funny money and it really isn't funny at all. If they took the AMT dollars out of the formula we would see how seriously broken our government really is.

Posted by Karen on April 29, 2007 12:59 PM