Alternative Minimum Tax History and Evolution

The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982 enacted the first comprehensive alternative minimum tax. An add-on minimum tax originally had been enacted as part of the Tax Reform Act of 1969, but this was repealed and replaced by the AMT in the 1982 Act.

These AMT provisions enacted in 1982 remain the foundation of the present law individual AMT.

In computing the AMT, taxpayers are allowed to take a deduction that is known as the AMT exemption amount. This is similar to the personal exemption and standard deduction allowed in the regular tax computation.

The AMT exemption amounts have not been indexed for inflation, even though the regular tax rates have been indexed since the late 1980s. The consequence of this is an ever-increasing number of taxpayers affected by the AMT.

There were over 4 million taxpayers who paid the AMT in tax year 2006 (these tax returns were filed in 2007).

Congress has been passing an AMT "patch" since 2001, increasing the exemption amount and therefore limiting the growth in the number of taxpayers affected by the AMT. Without this patch, approximately 20 million additional taxpayers would be paying the AMT, over and above the 4 million currently affected by it. This can be seen in the Joint Tax Committee projections.