Submitted by Paul Collacchi, Sep 10, 2007 12:30

I don't like taxes, but count me among those willing to pay a fare share to eliminate deficit spending.

Yes, we can quibble over the AMT rates, but putting all that aside, doesn't the AMT calculation actually simplify the tax code in a very real way?

Granted the initial purpose could be described as insuring that everyone had to pay some taxes despite the maze of loopholes and exemptions, but another way of describing it is "a flat-rate tax that eliminates most exemptions and loopholes ." Everyone, rich and "ordinary", who pay AMT, pay the same flat rate.

Why isn't that a good thing? And why isn't a reasonable AMT rate, plus an evolutionary plan to get most Americans under the simplified AMT method a real strategy towards a simplified, flat-rate tax structure?

If the AMT calculation method really is a highly simplified method relatively speaking, another interpretation for its proliferation might be that tax benefits, exemptions, credits, loopholes and other Congressional tax giveaways have become so pervasive now that millions of "ordinary" Americans benefit as only a few Americans once did. In that case AMT is not the monster, Congressional politicization of the tax code is the real monster, and AMT is still rightly doing its job -- forcing Americans to pay a fair share of taxes who would otherwise escape doing so in by making their way through the complicated tax evasion maze of giveaways from Congress.

If the AMT really is a relatively simplified, flat-rate method, it also begs the question of the motives of this author and others. Just exactly what kind of "tax reform" do you support? No taxation under any circumstance? If so, why don't you just say it.

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