Comment: Gentlemen: 1.) The Alternative Minimum Tax needs to have its floor for singles [and married couples] raised by a lot. In 2003, I had a lower than median AGI. Way below average for my part of the country--Southern California. I have modest mortgage interest compared to most, but fairly high medical deductions because I have a high deductible and must pay very high premiums to my health insurance company because I am over 60. [Even though I have not spent a night in a hospital in the more than 20 years I have been insured by them.] Yet in 2003, I came within a few hundred dollars of having to pay the Alternative Minimum Tax. Someone with my modest income shouldn't be anywhere near paying the Alternative Minimum Tax. It was intended to reclaim taxes from high income people who took too many deductions or perhaps had lucrative tax shelters. Now it is getting the people with middle incomes and lower. If it is to continue, it needs to have its thresholds radically revamped. It needs to be indexed to inflation and rising incomes. 2) Single people should not be paying so much more than married couples without children. The "marriage penalty" is a joke. The penalty is perpetually assessed on singles, not the married. People with two incomes have a great advantage over the single person with one income. Add children, and the tax advantage grows. Per the 2004 tax table, as taxable income rises to middle incomes, the differential swells greatly; for example, at an income of $52,000 to $52,050 the tax for a single person is $2,655 more than for a married couple [singles must pay $9,744 while the married filing jointly pay $7,089]. And my income is thousands below this. Yet we must very often pay the same rent or mortgage on similar housing, close to the same for food, and the same for heat, electricity, etc. And single people--particularly single women, must hire everything done around a house that a husband would do. As a widow, I find simple household repairs very expensive; while the married couple can manage them themselves without expenditure. Widows who are older have no hope of increasing income with time. They are just stuck paying higher taxes because they are so silly they haven't remarried. Though believe me, with the lower percentage of single men out there, one that drops drastically above age 40, nearly all are no one most women would want to marry--the disfunctional, the unemployed, etc. Is it our fault our husbands died? Why not give widows a break? 3) The flat tax is a bad idea. Many people will end up paying more than they do now if deductions such as mortgage interest, property taxes and medical expenses are eliminated. Property taxes go sky high in many areas, even California if anyone has bought a home since Mello Roos double taxation was introduced in 1984. Medical expenses once were fully deductible; but were shaved in the 1980's to only amounts over 7.5% of your AGI. Sure, folks, pay exhorbitant medical costs because instituting fairer and cheaper National Health Insurance wouldn't line the pockets of health insurance CEO's and other overpaid insurance executives with millions of dollars in unearned bonuses and stock. God forbid you could deduct most of these wildly inflated medical expenses on your income tax. At different times in Americans' lives different health expenses loom large, maternity when young, care for ill children, etc.; for older people not yet reaching the age of Medicare, they only go up as they are judged liabilities to insurance companies who punish them for surviving without making major claims on them. This though they have paid in premiums for years without getting much for it. You'd think they would have now earned the right not to have to pay more because they have already paid their dues for other people--it's their turn to be subsidized as they have subsidized others. If we can't deduct these monumental expenses, we are going to be even more impoverished by a new tax system. Our taxes must be fair to the poor and middle income citizens as well as the rich--who now reap the major benefits of President Bush's tax cuts. Cutting the complexity and number of forms would be great, but not if it increases what we must pay overall. Simpler instructions in straightforward language and fewer worksheets would help a lot. Kaye Klem Mission Viejo, CA |