Democrats Want Middle Class Tax Relief

The Alternative Minimum Tax is poised to effect millions of Middle Class Americans if Congress does not act. The tax was originally created to keep the rich from avoiding taxes but it could soon effect more of the middle class.

The alternative minimum tax, initially intended to ensure that the rich could not take so many deductions and credits that they paid no federal income taxes, will hit some 23 million taxpayers next spring when they file their 2007 income tax returns unless Congress takes action.

"This tax now affects schoolteachers, firefighters, police officers. It was never intended to be that way," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel, an Illinois Democrat who sits on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives.

"Middle-class families making between $75,000 and $100,000 are now more likely this year to pay the tax than those making more than a million dollars," Emanuel said in the weekly Democratic radio address.

If the tax is repealed it would cost 50 Billion per year and those revenues would need to be made up in some fashion. Expect lots of disagreements as to how this lost revenue will be made up.