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Wednesday, October 24, 2007
A Fresh Load of Rubbish on AMT and PAYGO
Do Senior GOP Taxwriters Intend Anyone to Buy it?
ITEM from the Republican Study Committee:
Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas and other members of the Republican Study Committee are asking colleagues to reject a patch for the alternative minimum tax that would result in what they call other tax increases to pay for it. In a Dear Colleague dated today, Hensarling and three other lawmakers wrote, "The correction of tax mistakes should never be offset with tax increases." The lawmakers wrote that they support efforts to prevent middle-class taxpayers from being subject to the AMT, but not by "offsetting tax increases on other people and businesses."
Rep. Jim McCreary (R-LA), ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee outdoes Hensarling, commenting that "This is not a new tax cut that should be paid for. This is preventing a tax increase." McCreary seems not to take account of the facts 1) that the continuation of current law is never a tax increase proposal that must be offset under PAYGO and 2) that "patching" AMT is therefore a tax cut that must be paid for under PAYGO.
When McCreary realizes this, he should quickly inform his counterpart in the Senate, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee. Grassley will be harder to convince, since he has an even more convoluted notion of why a patch shouldn't be paid for: because the government never intended to collect the large amounts of revenues the AMT would raise if it were left unchanged. Never intended to collect it?
That's a lot of rubbish. Now if you had such a load of fresh rubbish dropped on your street, would you believe someone who told you that the Department of Sanitation won't touch it because it never intended to collect it?
Posted by Dana Chasin
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