May 24, 2005
Who Cares About the AMT?
by Patrick Fleenor and Andrew Chamberlain
In the wake of yesterday's Congressional hearings on a possible repeal of the Alternative Minimum Tax (see news coverage here, here and here), we've just released a new backgrounder on the AMT explaining the issue and why it matters for taxpayers.
The bottom line:
Congress’ original goal of enacting the AMT was to ensure that very wealthy taxpayers do not escape tax liability through the abuse of tax preferences. However, the most economically sound way to achieve that was not to graft additional complexity onto the tax code. It was to eliminate the very tax preferences that were the source of the abuse.
Check out the full analysis here.
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