WASHINGTON - The House Committee on Ways and Means today passed H.R. 6275, the Alternative Minimum Tax Relief Act of 2008, today to protect millions of middle-class families from the alternative minimum tax (AMT) this year. The legislation, authored by Chairman Charles B. Rangel (D-NY) would responsibly provide tax relief to middle-class families by ensuring that the number of taxpayers subject to the AMT will not increase. Failure to pass this legislation would result in more than 25 million families facing a tax increase this year. The full House of Representatives is expected to consider H.R. 6275 in the coming weeks.
“It was our hope at the beginning of this Congress that we would eliminate the AMT entirely, rather than continue wrestling with a yearly ‘patch’ as we have done in the past," said Chairman Rangel. “However, since the Administration has failed to engage on tax reform, it is impossible to remove a provision like the AMT without simplifying the entire code to bring a greater sense of fairness and equity to our tax laws. So, we are going to do the right thing and offer more than 25 million taxpayers relief from the AMT this year without adding to the deficit. Not only are we doing the right thing in paying for the relief we provide today, but we are also doing the right thing by removing some of the inequities that exist in the code. The question before us today is not whether we patch the AMT, but who is going to pay for that relief."
The legislation provides one-year relief from the AMT without adding to the deficit by closing loopholes in the tax code, encouraging tax compliance, and repealing excessive government subsidies given to oil companies.
