Agreed, Bob. Tax cuts for the rich are on the agenda. Welcome aboard.

They're just paying their fair share, I don't see the problem.

After all, they want to pay more taxes,they're blue, this is in their best interest and it's for the elderly and children.

And they're "Upper Middle Class."

I don't see the political upside for blue-state Democrats in AMT relief. The tax code grants favorable treatment to a stack of behaviors that correlate with voting Republican, including (1) getting and staying married, (2) rearing children, (3) buying a home, (4) saving for your own retirement, (5) owning a small business, and (6) giving to charitable and religious organizations. The AMT drastically reduces favorable tax treatment for all of the above and therefore at the margins discourages those behaviors.

But from Ted Kennedy's point of view, AMT is the perfect tax, and it's only getting better. It hits the married, home-owning father of six who works his tail off as a successful professional or tradesman, saves for his kids' education and his own retirement, tithes to the local Baptist church where he's a deacon, and wouldn't dream of voting for the party of socialism, Saddam and sodomy. But it doesn't hurt the single guy with the same income who lives in a rented apartment with his girlfriend of the month, never attends church, spends all his disposable income on travel, restaurants, sports cars, booze, porn, etc., except for the $100 he gave to Howard Dean. Unless a Democrat has a marginal seat or is running for President, why would he cooperate in getting rid of AMT?

Gosh, this is going to hurt all those folks in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Miami, San Francisco, Seattle and the all other high flying blue islands.

Unfortunately, Random Lawyer makes a strong point.

Also unfortunately, if the Repulicans repeal the AMT the Demos. will be all over them, again, for tax relief for the rich.

Let the Democrats be the first to propose the move; or at least let them complain to their party for not doing so for a while longer.

Saw an op-ed in another Boston paper which essentially said Bush was from Texas (and Jeb from Florida) which are low tax states and therefore they don't care about the AMT. Of this ignores that is has only been Republicans discussing tax code changes that have broached reducing/killing the AMT.

Disagree with the above in that I know several people who, do to one time income like severance packages, were hit by the AMT and are really ticked off about it. These people would probably support any efforts to get rid of it.

The generalizations that Random Lawyer made are hilarious, 100% bulls&$t, but entertaining none the less. Hey RL, me and most of my friends are single, rent, travel, eat out, drink, drive nice cars, and make good money. We DON'T give any money to Dean, and in fact most volunteered for the Bush campaign this past fall. I am also betting that we know more about taxes, starting your own business, investing, and general knowldege of world affairs more than average boomer. I mean you should be nicer to us since we will cleaning up the boomer mess for the next 20 years. You all really need to get out more.

"Correlate with" and "at the margins discourages," not "are universally identified with" and "prevents in every case."

Hey, BJW - ever hear of the Jones Generation?

You're cleaning up their mess w/US, the tail-enders.

The tail-ender boomers who are the largest generation.

The ones who put W over the top.

AMT is, in essence, a flat income tax. Because it is not indexed to inflation, it is gradually taking over. Perhaps the plan is to have this become a 'stealth' implementation of a flat tax.

How much of the the AMT "tax rise" is an "absolute" tax rise (because of its "unindexed" brackets) and how much is it a "relative" tax hike (because the basic code rates have been lowered. Dems helped create the former, and they opposed the tax cuts that create the latter "hike". Either way, they have been less than helpful to taxpayers.

The latest National Review has a great line: "Liberals are complaining so much about the Alternative Minimum Tax, you would almost think that they wanted to cut it."

BJW,

Think about all those people in the chattering classes who are renting those apartments for $2-3 thousand a month or more in the UWS. They don't get mortgage deductions, they don't get deductions for kids, and they don't get deductions for putting anything away for the future. The AMT doesn't matter anything to them.

The people who get killed are the married highschool teachers who took out a 97% LTV mortgage and work a summer job. Now, today, those folks are Kerry voters, but after next Friday, maybe not.

April 6, 2005 06:26 PM:
You seem confused about the relationship of mortgage interest and AMT.

(specifically acquisition indebtedness mortgage interest)