Stealth Tax Relief Act of 2005

STEALTH TAX RELIEF ACT OF 2005 -- (House of Representatives - December 07, 2005)

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Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the Stealth Tax Relief Act, H.R. 4096, a temporary fix to a much larger, more overhanging problem, the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). Originally intended to ensure wealthy taxpayers paid their fair share, the AMT has become a tax on the middle-class. Without adjustments for inflation like the federal income tax, the AMT targets a growing number of people each year. Taxpayers in states with high property taxes and high local and state income taxes, in states like my home state of Connecticut, are most hard-hit by the AMT. In fact, Connecticut faces the third highest AMT tax liability in the nation.

H.R. 4096 will pass the House today and again, the House will evade its responsibility to find a real solution to the AMT attack on the middle-class for another year. The Majority seems to find plenty of time to cut social programs, increase the deficit, and afford estate, capital gains, and dividends tax cuts to the wealthiest among us, while consistently dragging their feet to fix a tax that targets 17 million working middle-class families. According to the Treasury Department, the Joint Committee on Taxation, and the Congressional Budget Office, the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 have, in fact, tripled the size of the AMT problem.

The American public deserves better. Last month, I supported a Democratic proposal in the House Ways and Means Committee that would have totally eliminated the AMT for all families with incomes under $200,000. Unfortunately, this measure was rejected along party lines. I am also a cosponsor of H.R. 2950, the Individual Tax Simplification Act that would among other things, repeal the AMT. However, to date, the bill has received no attention by the House Ways and Means Committee. And now today, I am disappointed that the Majority brought the underlying bill to the floor under the suspension calendar, a procedure which blocked the opportunity to offer an amendment to fully repeal the AMT.

Americans need real solutions to address these problems, not band-aids and bumper sticker slogans. In the absence of a real and viable solution, I will support this temporary extension. In the meantime, I encourage my colleagues in the House to stop discounting this crisis and work together to pass real reforms to the AMT.

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