A previous post day before yesterday featured the AMT tax trap. The Wall Street Journal today has this article: “Minimum Tax Ensnares More People Each Year.” What’s the most serious problem encountered by taxpayers, asks the article? According to the article and a report by a senior Internal Revenue Service official, “that dubious honor now belongs to the alternative minimum tax, which is hitting growing numbers of Americans.” The article quotes Nina E. Olson, IRS National Taxpayer Advocate of the Taxpayer Advocate Service, an IRS unit designed to help taxpayers cut through bureaucratic red tape and resolve problems that haven’t been fixed through normal IRS channels, as saying that the AMT problem is a “train wreck.”
The article notes that “[a]bout 3.3 million taxpayers will owe additional taxes next year because of the AMT,”up 27% from this year and that support for overhauling the tax is widespread.
The Tax Policy Center also has this article: “The AMT Out of Control.”