The Tax Policy Center has just issued research results and recommendations regarding repeal of the AMT that merit serious attention. As the New York Times reports today in Group Offers a Simple Fix for Alternative Minimum Tax, TPC's proposal features a reversion back to pre-Bush earned and investment tax rates on couples earning over $200,000 and singles earning half that. The proposal is close to revenue neutral over ten years, essentially replacing the estimated $850 billion the alternative tax would bring in over the same period, says Leonard E. Burman, co-director of the Center. That would enable immediately wholesale repeal of the AMT in as simple, equitable, and politically appealing a way as we have seen.

• Simple: The elegance of the proposal is the absence of Rube Goldberg whistles and bells, phase outs, trade-offs, sweeteners, etc. -- complexity often loses as many votes as it gains.
• Equitable: Per the Times, "the center's proposal would have an equal impact on Americans with million-dollar-plus salaries and no investments."
• Politically Appealing: The proposal involves no spending cuts, no deficit financing, and taxpayers with incomes below $500,000 would, on average, actually receive a tax cut from the proposal.

Details behind the Center's AMT reform proposal are available here.