bush's creeping tax hike

The NY Times editors point out what more people are finding out the hard way. While pursuing tax "reform" ("reform" meaning, "giving more to the rich" in the GOP dictionary) de facto President Bush and the do-almost-nothing Republican Congress have not touched the Alternative Minimum Tax, and the AMT is claiming more victims. In effect, this makes a lot of regular people pay MORE in income taxes than when Bush began his "tax cuts."

It was passed over 30 years ago, when a six-figure income was much rarer than today, and was intended to keep the very rich from using various exemptions and dodges from paying little or no tax. Unfortunately, the morons who drafted the legislation didn't index it for inflation. And now it's hitting people who would not consider themselves rich by any means, but because the make something over $100,000 and have deductions for kids, mortgages, and state taxes, find themselves hit by the AMT.

But the GOP is resting easy, because during their tax "reform" they made sure that rich-person-type things -- dividend income, etc -- would not put them in the same trap. So that's okay.