Who would have thought that one of the Democrats’ priorities would be giving tax cuts to well-off people?
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.
Mind you, the AMT has been on my hit list for a while and I wouldn’t be sad at all to see it go. Republicans have tried, on a few occasions, to srap it, but it always seems that the Dems were right there to stop them.
Something about it giving a tax break to the rich or some nonsense slogan.
Well, they’re after it now, about two days after they realized that it tended to hurt their very blue constituents.
The focus on the AMT is hardly surprising, given that victims of the tax have been concentrated in high-cost urban areas such as Washington, New York and San Francisco — places that tend to vote Democratic. Rangel, Hoyer and Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the presumptive House speaker, all represent states hit hard by the AMT, which is sometimes called the “blue-state tax.” To map states with the highest concentrations of AMT taxpayers is to draw bull’s-eyes over California and the Northeastern seaboard.
The AMT had gotten onto the Dems radar because, wouldn’t you know it, a whole lot of people have been getting more wealthy in the past several years. According to the article, 100,000 families just in the DC Metro area alone, have fallen into the tax in the past three years.
Now, in fairness to the Dems and their particular love of taxes, they’re not attempting to get rid of the AMT. Oh now. That would just be silly.
What they’re after is to make sure that only 4 million end up paying it instead of 23 million. Now that’s good work, sure, but it’s not nearly good enough considering that 3.8 million who are on it now. It reminds me of how Dems routinely gripe about how the budget often gets “cut” every year.
The upshot of the story is that the brave tax-cutting Dems have decided they’re just looking out for the folks who make between $200,000 and $500,000 a year.
Way to champion the little man, Dems. I sense your new campaign slogan is practially written.
And as an aside, can anyone remember the last time the Washington Post was so bluntly honest about a tax in a news article? I surely can’t. I thought for a second I was reading the National Review.
