Question: Who Cares?

I know that sounds flippant and perhaps even naive. Plus, the article certainly answers the question of who stands to gain the most from repeal of the Alternative Minimum Tax.

This being the case, I'll be more specific and relevant in repeating; who amongst the few (incredibly awesome {-:) but politically astute readers of this silly li'l blog thinks this is a worthy priority for our newly elected, Democratically controlled Congress?

Alternative Minimum Tax Targeted
Democrats Seek Fix For Middle-Class* Families

By Lori Montgomery
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 11, 2006; Page A01

Democratic leaders this week vowed to make the alternative minimum tax a centerpiece of next year's budget debate, saying the levy threatens to unfairly increase tax bills for millions of middle-class families by the end of the decade.

The complex and expensive tax was designed to prevent the super-rich from using deductions, credits and other shelters to avoid paying the Internal Revenue Service. But because of rising incomes, the tax is expected to expand to more than 30 million taxpayers in 2010 from 3.8 million mostly well-off households in 2006.

Fixing the AMT has long been a top priority for Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), who is in line to head the Senate Finance Committee. Last year, Baucus co-authored a bill to repeal the tax with Senate Finance Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa).

Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), the presumptive chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, this week put fixing the AMT at the top of his agenda, calling it far more urgent than dealing with President Bush's request to extend the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, which are scheduled to expire in 2010.
[Read the rest . . . ]

Rep. Rangel's evaluation** not-with-standing, do you care? If so, and other than for the votes it'll unquestionably garner in the neigh but two years off Presidential election, what great good will repealing this particularly targeted element of our country's still somewhat grotesquely bloated tax code achieve?

Whilst the presentation of my question makes readily apparent what I think about its rank on the priorities of the 110th Congress, I assure you all that I am serious in my desire to indentify any fiscally responsible reason to support such an exorbitant expenditure of political energies.

By 2010, "the AMT will become the de facto tax system for filers in the $200,000 to $500,000 income range, 94 percent of whom will face the tax," according to a report by the Tax Policy Center. About half of tax filers making $75,000 to $100,000 will have to pay the tax, including 89 percent of married couples in that income bracket who have at least two children.

Wouldn't it make more political and economic sense to go in and fix whatever functionality within the code is going to cause it to include even lower income families? The idea of a basement tax rate for the majority of high income earners is an empirically sound one. Why does this implementation need to expand the definition of "high income" so drastically downwards?

I don't know. Maybe it's just my minor oppositional disorder acting up, but it seems to me the Democrats are truly being jackasses for making this piece of the tax code a high priority.


* Again with the possibility of it just being my minor OD, but I think that, statistically speaking, that should really read Upper Middle Class. "Class Warfare" has always been hyperbole for the real phenomenon of interclass competition, so I'll dismiss with confidence any accusations of my perpetrating the former which may arise over this asteriskical.

Isn't competition a good thing for Capitalism?

** Does anyone really think those economically indefensible tax cuts will be extended by this Congress?