NYT Discovers AMT

Conservatives and supply-siders have been complaining about the alternative minimum tax for years now. Literally.

So it's interesting that a publication as esteemed as the New York Times has discovered the issue. And gawd bless 'em, I have to give them credit for turning the discovery into yet another argument against the Bush tax cuts:

When the current form of the alternative tax was adopted, as part of the 1986 tax reform act, it raised only about $1 billion from a relatively small number of rich taxpayers who used aggressive techniques to avoid income taxes, Mr. Burman said.

The authors said that the revenue from the alternative tax is rising so fast that to return it to its original intent would cost as much as $951 billion over the next decade. They said simply abolishing the tax would make the system less fair. But limiting it to the old target could be financed, they said, by freezing the 2001 Bush tax cuts, for both income and estates, at their current levels.

Only in the worldview of the New York Times is returning a portion of government's booty to taxpayers a "cost." And heaven forbid we even consider abolishing a tax that was enacted purely as a punitive measure against "the rich," even if it is now punishing the middle class!

[Posted at 21:43 CST on 09/18/02] [Link]