Stop me if you've heard this one before

In this morning's Washington Post there is a story about the Democrats new attempt to square the circle of the Alternative Minimum Tax. The AMT, as it is known, was a device to get at the supposed 155 miscreants in the system who supposedly did not pay any tax. Its' operation was supposed to be simple - attack those people who use "preferences" in the system to escape tax and add a separate higher tax schedule for those who did not pay enough.

The "new" proposal would exempt those earning under $250,000 per year - or 98 percent of the taxpayers (I guess then the dems assume that there are about 7750 taxpayers total unless of course there are more than the originally assumed 155 non-payers). Those earning between $250,000 and $500,000 would see a tax reduction according to the Post's anonymous sources. SO, those earning more than $500,000 "would take a much harder hit from the AMT, as well as other adjustments to the tax code, the sources said." Yeah, right. That would amount to a 5-13% boost in tax rate for those taxpayers according to a study by Brookings and the Urban Institute. "A huge number of families will receive tax relief as the result of this. It's something like 87 million to one million," (Note that comes from the Chair of the Democrat Campaign Committee not the Chair of Ways and Means, but then that tells you something about the tax policy here. The significant raise in rates seems to be assumed not to have any distorting effect on the economy. That is absurd.

It would probably not be prudent to guess whether the original brainstorm of these members will come out the way it was described by the Post. Based on past performances since the original idea of the AMT, the chances are close to zero.