[Mavdog]

the point is the amt will affect taxpayers who weren't meant to be included.

JUDY WOODRUFF, NewsHour Special Correspondent: It was first created in the late 1960s to make sure that a few hundred of the wealthiest citizens paid their share of taxes. But 3 1/2 decades later, the Alternative Minimum Tax is now hitting millions of Americans.

The Alternative Minimum Tax, or AMT for short, is a tax code that runs parallel to regular income tax. It offers fewer deductions and just two tax rates: 26 and 28 percent. Taxpayers who are subject to it have to calculate their regular income tax, compare that to the AMT, and pay whichever amount is larger.

More than 3.5 million Americans are expected to pay the alternative tax this year, and the number is growing rapidly. The Congressional Budget Office predicts that, by 2010, one in five taxpayers could be hit by it, including most married couples with incomes over $100,000.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/econo.../tax_4-14.html