Bush Commission Wants To End Alternative Minimum Tax

[DrFunkenstein]

WASHINGTON, July 20 - President Bush's tax advisory commission will recommend abolishing the alternative minimum tax for individuals, the commission chairman said on Wednesday.

But the chairman, Connie Mack, a Republican senator from Florida from 1989 to 2001, said there was no agreement on how to offset the $1.2 trillion in revenue over 10 years that would be lost if that tax were repealed.

The alternative minimum tax was established to prevent wealthy people from taking advantage of so many tax breaks that they paid little if any tax.

The tax was enacted in 1969 after a Treasury Department study found that 155 taxpayers with incomes of $200,000 or more in 1967 paid no income taxes. In 2002, the latest data shows, 5,650 individuals and couples with incomes of $200,000 or more paid no income taxes and 83,000 were taxed at an average rate of less than 15 percent.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/21/business/21tax.html

[CrispyQ]

1. The corporations & rich continue to suck the blood of the

common people. Who will they suck off of when our blood runs out?

[canadianbeaver]

2. Each other.....

that will be all thats left anyways....

[Igel]

3. I don't know about doing away with it;

but something certainly has to be done to fix it.

It wasn't indexed for inflation. The minimum income needed to be "rich" in 1969 puts you pretty much in the middle/upper middle class in 2005. We nearly had to pay it--and it would have been quite a shock, it's not like the transition is gradual--last year.

[Patty Diana]

4. On March 23rd they had a meeting on how the fuck to tax benefits

of Americans, like taxing a health care benefit as wages---MAYBE THEY FOUND A WAY ..... God Almightly, how I hate these Fuckers!!!!!!! Go to the tax reform committee page and find March 23rd

[Patty Diana]

5. Job Sponsored health plans may be targeted for taxation

http://news.yahoo.com/s/krwashbureau/20050713/ts_krwashbureau/_bc_healthtax_wa article contains link to tax site