FreedomTalks

There’s a sharp column at NRO todayon how the AMT combines with pay-go rules to create a massive tax mess. Here’s the gist:

The Democratic pay-as-you-go imperative requires that tax cuts be balanced, based on static scoring from the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, with tax hikes or spending cuts. Spending cuts are rarely considered in practice, so the rule in fact means that tax cuts must be paired with tax hikes. Under the Democratic interpretation of the AMT, preventing a tax hike, even one that is unplanned and unintended, requires substituting another tax hike in its place. That’s in principle. In practice, however, H.R. 3996 uses a timing gimmick to satisfy nearly half its revenue requirement under pay-as-you-go: It shifts $37.8 billion in corporate tax revenue from outside the budget window in fiscal-year 2013 to fiscal 2012.

And here’s our own Dick Armey talking about why the AMT needs to go.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 8th, 2007 at 12:21 pm and is filed under Taxes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.