We all know the whole tax code should be rewritten and grossly simplified. It's the preverbial "too many special interests" that have kept this from happening...mostly at the very high income and or corporate tax level. My wife and I as two wage earners have NO deductions other than a home mortgage, and some in congress want to remove that too. When subject to the alternative minimum tax, you effectively are denied ANY deductions, including the homeowner's deduction.
Congress has been unable to give up the revenue the AMT produces, and so puts band aid fixes on it year after year. If memory serves me right, the tax was orignally put in place in the 1970s after 100 of the wealthiest US citizens (read millionaires) paid NO income tax because of all the loopholes and deductions available to such "earners." Now, the triggering income level hits many professionals, including pilots, who are far from wealthy. Interestingly enough, I just saw a poll that showed 45% of Americans think you're rich if you have a 250K household income. Given the current tax code, my wife worked for nothing...we gave it all to Uncle Sam, (and we don't hit the 250 number.) There is also a huge jump in "average" income reported by tax rate....IRS statistics show the jump in average goes from about 220-240 to over 585 or so in the next bracket. In other words, there are a lot of professional households in the 220 area, but business owners and other well to do tax payers have a big jump to get to their average.
As an aside, I once read an estimate that a national consumption tax would require a rate of about 18% to equal the current tax revenue numbers. I personally believe that the first place to start is to STOP out of control govenment spending. (Not in my lifetime!) We should not be printing or borrowning any more money...a policy that is simply unsustainable and setting us up for even more problems. Somewhere else I read that the current federal deficit is roughly $40,000 for each man, woman, and child in the country; or in other words, the federal government has the typical family of four in debt of $160,000! It takes about $6400 of your tax money just to pay the interest on that debt each year, before you can begin to pay for other federal programs.
In short...I'm not sure I'd buy into the pre election tax reduction rhetoric...the shell game in Washington continues.