Tax Tip of the Week: What is Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT)?

AMT is a supplemental income tax imposed by the government, required in addition to baseline income tax for certain individuals, corporations, estates, and trusts that have exemptions or special circumstances allowing for lower payments of standard income tax.

In 1969, Congress noticed that 155 people with high incomes were legally using so many deductions and other tax breaks that they were paying absolutely nothing in federal income taxes. This, as you can imagine, was an embarrassment for the government. So AMT was born to make the tax system fairer

It was designed to keep wealthy taxpayers from using loopholes to avoid paying taxes. , but because it wasn’t automatically updated for inflation, more middle-class taxpayers were getting hit with the AMT each year. The AMT exemption amounts are now indexed to rise with inflation.