Senators Criticize the Alternative Minimum Tax

WASHINGTON -- Charles Grassley, the Republican chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, on Monday called for the end of the alternative minimum tax (AMT) this year, The Associated Press reported.

''It's not only a tax that's going to ruin the middle class, that was never to be taxed in the first place, it was never supposed to bring one penny into the Treasury,'' said Grassley, R-Iowa, referring to revenue the government was not already owed. “So what's the big deal about doing away with it?''

Robert J. Carroll, deputy assistant Treasury secretary for tax analysis, told the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Taxation that the alternative minimum tax is too costly to simply repeal. The cost of repealing the alternative minimum tax goes up -- to more than $800 billion -- if lawmakers extend the tax cuts passed during the Bush administration past their expiration date at the end of the decade, the AP reported.

''It is both inevitable and timely that the long-term solution to the AMT problem will be through broad reform of the income tax,'' he said. “Inevitable, because budgetary constraints preclude simple AMT repeal. Timely, because our overly complicated tax system . . . is in dire need of reform.''

Carroll told lawmakers that the tax no longer fulfills its original mission to ensure that wealthy taxpayers pay taxes. Despite the AMT, several thousand high-income taxpayers escape taxation every year, he said.

-- NYSSCPA.org News Staff

Posted on 5/24/05