Looks Like "Another Year, Another AMT Patch"

The House Ways and Means Committee passed legislation to avoid an AMT intrusion on middle-income taxpayers and extend several small popular tax credits by a 22-13 vote today. H. R. 3996 would keep from adding AMT to 23 million new taxpayers and would extend such items as the work opportunity credit for victims of Hurricane Katrina, deduction of state and local sales taxes and tax-free charitable donations from IRAs. Also, the bill excludes from gross income mortgage debt forgiveness and extends eligibility for the child tax credit. Clint Stretch of Deloitte warns that the Senate may fail to provide funds for the patch. Finally, interim commissioner Linda Stiff warned that failure to quickly pass the patch would mean that later legislation would not get into the 2007 IRS forms, causing administrative headaches--including delays in tax refunds--similar to last year.

Regardless of political influence, let us all hope that Congress can avoid the temptation to modify further and pass this legislation. The inconvenience to middle-income taxpayers and tax preparers of failing to do so might come back to haunt Congress later.