September 25, 2007
The Tax Foundation has posted new tables to its website that show where the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) hits hardest. Specifically, there are three new tables that show the impact of AMT by county, by congressional district and by major city area. The county table looks very similar to the property tax by county table that was released two weeks ago. This is largely due to the fact that AMT disallows the deduction for state and local taxes paid, including property taxes. Another reason is that the demographics of those living in areas with high taxes on owner-occupied housing tend to be similar to those who are in the prime AMT zone (making between $200,000 and $500,000).
The top 10 congressional districts in terms of percentage of returns hit by AMT in 2005 are listed here:
| Member, Party, & District | Percentage of Returns Paying AMT | Rank | Average AMT per AMT Return |
| Lowey (D-NY 18) | 15.05% | 1 | $6,204 |
| Maloney (D-NY 14) | 13.52% | 2 | $12,940 |
| Eshoo (D-CA 14) | 13.46% | 3 | $8,235 |
| Frelinghuysen (R-NJ 11) | 12.70% | 4 | $4,645 |
| Waxman (D-CA 30) | 12.49% | 5 | $7,841 |
| Shays (R-CT 4) | 12.06% | 6 | $5,667 |
| Garrett (R-NJ 5) | 12.01% | 7 | $4,608 |
| Nadler (D-NY 8) | 11.84% | 8 | $8,604 |
| Ferguson (R-NJ 7) | 11.82% | 9 | $4,376 |
| King (R-NY 3) | 10.97% | 10 | $3,841 |
Note that these tables are derived from data for tax year 2005 that was just recently released by the IRS. This year (2007), the AMT is set to hit millions more taxpayers due to the dropping of the exemption level. (Read more about that on our FAQ here.) Therefore, these tables are likely to be better indicators of which areas would see the biggest tax cut if AMT was permanently repealed. With regard to an AMT patch (also discussed in FAQ), these tables are likely to be less reliable in terms of predicting which areas would save the most.