Failure of Alternative Minimum Tax rules

[teejayevans]

Remember when they passed AMT, it was to prevent rich people from not paying their fair share of taxes?
Why’s no one mentioning the apparent failure of it to do that? Instead of tax overhaul, why not just modify the AMT to include whatever income it’s apparently not including? I expect the laws as passed by congress to be somewhat vague, so IRS could simply make some minor changes on its own and presto: the billionaires now owe taxes.

 

[geeky_grrl]

A lot of the wealth growth of the ultra-rich is unrealized capital gains. I think Congress would need to act to count that since it would be a major change in the tax laws to either start taxing unrealized capital gains or to add a wealth tax to tax the assets of the wealthy.

Edit: A pretty long but good look at how the rich avoid taxes is https://www.propublica.org/article/...ds-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax