I've written about the Alternative Minimum Tax before. Here's <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54021-2003Jul14.htmlan article from the Associated Press about how the AMT is becoming a bigger burden for middle class taxpayers. According to researchers cited in the article, the AMT will hit as many as 1/3rd of taxpayers by 2010.

The AMT was passed in 1970 because a small number of wealthy people took advantage of the complex tax code and managed to avoid paying any income tax (whose fault is that, the people who took advantage of the complex code or the people who wrote the code in the first place). The AMT was written to make sure that didn't happen. Unfortunately, it was never indexed to inflation (according to the inflation calculator, $1 in 1970 had the same buying power as $4.73 today). As a result, the tax intended to "get the rich" is now going to hit millions of people.

By 2010, many taxpayers who consider themselves average middle-class families will pay the tax. It will hit 97 percent of married couples, with 2 children, who earn $75,000 to $100,000.

...

The tax, called the alternative minimum tax, started in 1970 after lawmakers discovered that a handful of high-income households had used tax shelters to avoid paying any income taxes.

It now imposes a complex accounting requirement on many taxpayers, forcing some to compute their taxes twice, once under standard procedures and again under the alternative minimum tax.

The Internal Revenue Service's taxpayer advocate identified the tax as one of the most complex parts of the code and has urged repeal.

That last line caught my eye: even the IRS's own taxpayer advocate has urged repeal of the AMT.