Big Dogs Weblog

The AMT, a Congressional Tax Scam

by Big Dog on Dec 22, 2007 at 11:35 Political

The Alternative Minimum Tax, or AMT, was enacted in 1969 to force millionaires to pay a “minimum” amount of taxes. The law was specifically aimed at the fewer than 200 millionaires in this country. I am sure Congress did not consider that there would be many more millionaires over the years with a few billionaires sprinkled in. They also never figured what would happen to this archaic law over the years. Since Congress failed to index the AMT for inflation, this law has been affecting people who are no where near being millionaires and it has done so for years. People who make a little as $150,000 can be hit by the AMT (and some with lower incomes depending on circumstances). There are people who would argue that $150,000 is a very good salary, and it is, but that in no way makes a person a millionaire.

Nearly 40 years after the AMT was enacted Congress has decided to do something about the way that it is affecting non-millionaires. But this comes with great concerns to our esteemed members of the criminal club in Congress because they are trying to figure out how to make up the revenue that will be lost by fixing the AMT. They want to do this by raising taxes on the rich (who else) but the AMT was a tax that was designed to only affect the rich in the first place. Charlie Rangel is beside himself because of all the money the government will lose if they fix the AMT without replacing the revenue source. Rangel says this as if the money belongs to the government instead of the people.

What I want Rangel and others to do is abolish the AMT completely. It is antiquated and has no place in our system. There are a lot of rich people and they pay a great deal in taxes. Then, I want Rangel and the other members of Congress to find a way to refund the money that they have received illegally over the years. The AMT was designed to impact millionaires. It has resulted in non-millionaires paying a fortune in extra taxes over the years so Congress owes people money back. Their law affected people it was not supposed to touch so the reality of the situation is, Congress will not be losing money, as Rangel claims but rather it will be no longer getting money to which it is not entitled.

My opinion is that Congress has never been entitled to the money the AMT has raised from non-millionaires because this is contrary to the law they enacted in 1969. Congress has been ignoring this for nearly four decades because they liked taking in extra money that they had not planned on getting. This allows them to waste even more. The problem is, the AMT has not reached down to the middle class of America and the middle class is not too happy. Congress might kiss the rears of lobbyists and rich people for campaign money but the middle class is a larger voting block and they do not want to tick everyone off. So they put up a little patch to keep the AMT from getting even more people this year while they work on a way to make the rich pay for a mistake that was only supposed to affect the rich in the first place.

The desire of the Democrats in Congress to always tax the hell out of the rich is one of the reasons many businesses decide to move their efforts out of the country. It is why many rich people have investments that are not subject to the US tax system and it is why rich people hire armies of lawyers to keep them from being raked over the coals. Next time one of you bleeding heart liberals cries about some big company (like Heinz) outsourcing to another country don’t cry about the company and how evil and greedy it is. Instead, focus your anger toward a body that thinks it is OK to rape people because they are successful. The actions of Congress cause people to react.

People who have paid the AMT over the years (and who are not millionaires) should write a letter to their members of Congress demanding their money back. They should assert it was taken by fraud and should be returned.

The AMT does not make millionaires pay a minimum tax. It forces ordinary wage earners to find ways to reduce the burden of taxes by getting higher cost health insurance and making larger contributions to retirement plans. These reduce the amount of income that is actually taxed. Of course, there are plenty of ways to avoid taxes, as the rich in this country (like members of Congress) have found out.

We need a tax code that is no more than 10 pages long. It should include a flat tax that cannot be raised above a certain number without the vote of the people. The flat tax will eliminate the need for the pithy class warfare Democrats love to play and it will eliminate the need for many other tax schemes such as the AMT. It should also reduce the need for an IRS (the Gestapo of the Congress) and it will reduce the cost associated with running the tax scheme of this country.

One thing we should make sure of is that Rangel and the rest of his bandits are not allowed to rape the rich to fix a problem that should never have happened and only happened due the the incompetence of the Congress.

Others with similar items:
Outside the Beltway, Stop the ACLU, The Midnight Sun, Rosemary’s Thoughts, guerrilla radio, 123beta, Adam’s Blog, Right Truth, Stix Blog, Shadowscope, Leaning Straight Up, Cao’s Blog, The Amboy Times, Chuck Adkins, Conservative Cat, Nuke’s, Faultline USA, Allie is Wired, third world county, Woman Honor Thyself, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, Walls of the City, The World According to Carl, Blue Star Chronicles, Pirate’s Cove, Celebrity Smack, The Pink Flamingo, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Tags: amt, Congress, crimes, Democrats, incompetence, tax and spend, tax the rich, taxes