Chuck Grassley: “I want my colleagues to look at the baseline. We can see the orange line. That is the individual taxes based on…”

“I want my colleagues to look at the baseline. We can see the orange line. That is the individual taxes based on historical average. The AMT is part of the individual income tax. Historically, individual income taxes have been at about 8 or 9 percent. That is the red line. The AMT and the regular tax balloon proportionately, under current law, over the next 40 years is going to go up very dramatically. This balloon effect is due to the sunset of bipartisan tax relief and AMT. Now let us focus a little bit closer. Let us look at the next chart. This chart shows that extension of the bipartisan tax relief still leaves individual taxes at record levels. The blue line shows individual taxes are going to be growing very dramatically. The chart also shows that fixing the AMT leaves individual income taxes at record levels, as we can see from the orange line. What we can see is we seriously do have an alternative minimum tax problem and fixing it will not gut the revenue base over the long term. It is common sense that an unfair tax such as the alternative minimum tax, that is out of control, should be fixed without regard to offsets. Common sense plays out on the budget side as well. We have even heard incorrect assertions that this budget does not address the alternative minimum tax problem. Well, guess what. In this budget, there is room for extending the current patch or hold harmless for millions of families facing an alternative minimum tax.…”