Stealth Tax Increases

And you know what? The President needs that revenue. Needs it bad. Otherwise, the deficits will be much larger than they're gonna be. NYTimes (04.10.05):

"Cynics have long predicted that the Bush administration, plagued by budget deficits, will eventually start raising taxes. But now it is becoming clear how it would do so: the alternative minimum tax. It was created in 1969 to prevent the very rich from using tax deductions to avoid paying a fair share of taxes. But when the deadline for filing income tax returns arrives on Friday, the alternative minimum tax will require 2.9 million families to pay an average of about $6,000 more than what they would owe under traditional calculations. That is just the start. If current law remains unchanged, the alternative minimum tax is expected to wring an extra $33.9 billion from 18 million households in 2006. In 2010, it will rake in an additional $100 billion, and by 2015 an extra $200 billion". A Tax Increase That Bush Didn't Mention

Why, you might ask, is this happening? Because the AMT threshhold was never tied to inflation. As income has risen over the years, the threshhold stayed the same. Ha, ha. Pretty funny, huh? And therein lies the rub. In formulating practically all of its economic policy, the White House assumed the amount of revenue currently being raised via the AMT would always be there, in some form or another. Ergo if the cash isn't coming in from the AMT it has to come from somewhere else. The President absolutely will not roll back his income tax cuts, so what's a poor boy to do? Hand the Democrats another issue to beat you over the head with in 2006. Hey, permanent tax cuts for the rich, using AMT stealth tax increases on the middle class to fund it. Not to mention what they want to do to your Social Security. Sigh!! What do you expect? Them's the Republicans for you. More background here.