Where's your refund?

Because of the Congress' late fix to the alternative minimum tax, millions of Americans will have to wait for their income tax refund this year. Here is one reason why:

Last December we witnessed a rare event as Charles Schumer, Democrat Senator from New York and Charlie Rangel, Democrat Representative from New York both actively supported the discontinuance of the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). Hard to believe that two Tax and Spend Democrats would want to cut a tax, especially dyed-in- the- wool taxers like these two.

A little background on the AMT: during the 1960’s a few wealthy people were able to avoid paying any federal income tax due to high allowable deductions; this was unacceptable to Democrats so Congress in 1969 passed the AMT to extract a tax payment from the “wealthy.” Over the years this tax went on auto-pilot and had no indexing for inflation; gradually more and more people got caught in this AMT that was meant for rich people.


However, there’s always a however, New York City is one of the high income parts of the country and as incomes rose since the 60’s, the AMT began to catch more and more of these “wealthy” people. The past couple of years thousands of not-so-wealthy people got caught up in AMT and taxpayer unrest began to mount. Interestingly, it didn’t really bother congress one bit, they happily spent the money. That’s when Schumer and Rangel started to get serious heat from their voters in New York City--voters, good Democrats who like tax and spend policies, suddenly found themselves paying federal taxes under AMT, and they did not like it.

When it comes to taxes versus votes there is no contest in the analysis of Schumer and Rangel. Taxes that cost them votes are clearly unfair; the taxes must go. As we saw this past December, the two Charlies played Santa Claus. Their voters got a package containing an AMT “free pass.”
Hal Neff Bismarck