“Tax cuts may push some families into AMT trap“: USA Today.com reports. The article states:
The Bush administration’s tax cuts, the main reason many families will get a larger refund, will also force more taxpayers to pay the alternative minimum tax. . . The Bush tax cut exacerbated the problem because it reduced ordinary income tax rates but left AMT rates unchanged, says John Battaglia, a director with Deloitte, the U.S. arm of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, a financial services firm. While the Bush administration increased the AMT exemption amount for certain taxpayers, the AMT will still ensnare many upper-middle-income taxpayers who take advantage of widely used deductions.
Kerry Kerstetter offers his thoughts on the tax at the Tax Guru-Ker$tetter Letter:
Actually, it would be good if more people saw what an insane tax this is and demanded that our rulers eliminate it. It seems that until the number of victims reaches a certain critical mass, it will just be perceived as a tax on the evil rich, who deserve no tax breaks according to “popular wisdom” (an oxymoron if there ever was one).