Political Quotes

“Would the Senator agree that the difficulty of projecting the AMT tax liability makes it tough for taxpayers to compute their estimated tax payments and creates a situation in which, just because of its complexity, they can get hit with penalties? I think the reason Oregonians are concerned about this--we have heard about it in the Senate Finance Committee--is that the AMT is essentially a separate tax system with its own tax rates and deduction rules which are less generous than regular rates and regular rules. This contributes to the tax-filing nightmare. The only way you can tell if you owe the alternative minimum tax is by filling out the forms or by being audited by the Internal Revenue Service. If it turns out you should have paid the alternative minimum tax and didn't, you owe back taxes plus any penalties or interests the IRS wants to dole out. My question is, I ask my good friend, how in the world is a typical taxpayer going to be able to make sense out of something like that which lots of accountants tell me they cannot even sort through?”