Alternative Minimum Tax and Common Sense-Sorry Charlie...Rangel!

Well, apparently there are some people with sense in Washington DC after all. We have had a continued debate about the Alternative Minimum Tax(AMT), the alleged tax on the rich that has extended its reach way beyond its original planned target of 2000 very wealthy Americans. The bizarre nature of the debate has always centered around the fact that even though the tax was unfair and was taxing beyond its mandate-once instituted the politicians felt the additional money was theirs to spend. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) the Chairman of the House Way and Means committee was holding hostage any fix to the AMT until he got agreement on a more comprehensive tax reform.

Congress has dropped it demand to link the fix on AMT to new taxes. From Bloomberg:

Congress moved closer to protecting 23 million households from the alternative minimum tax as Senate Democrats dropped a demand to link it to a tax increase on executives at private equity firms and hedge funds.

The Senate approved a one-year, stop-gap measure that temporarily indexes the minimum tax for inflation, sparing 23 million American households from an average tax increase of $2,000 this year.

This is only one step but a big one. The House is going to be under significant pressure to follow suit with similar adjustments to their legislation.

Read the entire article here.

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