BNA ($): Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and ranking Republican Charles Grassley (Iowa) Jan. 4 introduced a bill (S. 55) to eliminate the individual alternative minimum tax. This move is not unexpected. Baucus and Grassley have been clamoring for AMT repeal for years, but I choked on my waffle this morning when I got to this bit: Grassley has adamantly maintained that the cost of lost revenues from preventing the AMT from further creeping into the middle class should not be offset, given that the revenue was never meant to be collected in the first place. [emphasis mine] Never meant to be collected in the first place?* That’s not an entirely accurate statement as President Bush and Congressional tax-cutters, in order to ease the passage of the budget-busting 2001 tax cuts (EGTRRA), relied on AMT revenues to make the tax cuts appear less costly. This fact is quite stark when one looks at the amount of AMT revenues under the Bush tax cuts vs. AMT revenues under pre-Bush tax cuts: AMT Reveune (billions of dollars) Year Current Law pre-EGTRRA Law 2006 23.9 23.4 2007 69.8 28.4 2008 86.3 33.2 2009 97.6 37.3 2010 117.4 43.4 2006-17 944.4 715.2 Source: Tax Policy Center, "The Individual Alternative Minimum Tax: Historical Data and Projections", Table 1 *Honestly, I'm not entirely sure what Grassley is getting at here. Is he suggesting that taxpayers who are liable to pay AMT would not be tax evaders if they failed to pay the additional tax, because the tax was "never meant to be collected in the first place?"