The American Spectator

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(Page 6 of 11)

p>In my opinion, this country would be better off with one less narrow-minded, self-righteous hypocrite on the Supreme Court. br> -- Paul Dorell br> Evanston, Illinois /p> p> NO ALTERNATIVE? br> Re: J.T. Young's Raising Taxes by Alternative Means : /p>

With all the good arguments available to use against our current federal tax system, I really hate constantly seeing the argument that it is Too Complicated. Case in point is J. T. Young's statement that calculating the Alternative Minimum Tax requires you to "fill out a 12-line worksheet, read 8 pages of instructions, and complete a 55-line form." Well, yeah, or you can have TurboTax or TaxCut do it for you in about a half-second. Without even asking.

Ironically, the "what-if" capabilities of tax software make it easy to see what is the real outrage in the AMT, which is that it is the only tax I have ever seen that goes away if you make more money. Don't believe it? If your tax software shows you owe an AMT, simply add in a mythical $50,000 in extra income to your return. Your basic tax liability obviously goes up, but, poof, the AMT is gone. This is because, like many government initiatives, the AMT has morphed into something never intended. Originally an attempt to reign in rich tax-dodgers, the AMT is now nature's way of telling you that you simply don't earn enough to justify all your tax deductions. Try harder next year.

p>Perhaps if conservatives spent more time explaining how perverse the AMT is, and less time complaining how complicated it is to calculate, we could get rid of the damn thing. br> --

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