Then there is the alternative minimum tax, which was intended to prevent wealthy taxpayers from using deductions and tax shelters to shield much of their income.
This is accomplished by managing the level of taxable income, most commonly by using deductions like interest expenses that result from a maximal level of debt.
Ms. Milton drew a comparison to the alternative minimum tax — a tax modified in 1986, supposedly as a way to keep affluent people from using deductions to avoid paying taxes.
The tax reprieve postpones for one year only an expansion of the alternative minimum tax, a parallel tax system enacted in 1969 to prevent very wealthy investors from using deductions and tax shelters to avoid paying income tax altogether.
In an op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, Mr. Rangel portrayed his plan as a way to help the middle class by rescuing them from the alternative minimum tax, which was originally intended to ensure that the wealthy could not escape income taxes by using deductions and loopholes.
"Inge used deduction and evidence to discover something unseeable.
Doctors used deduction to diagnose the cause of the woman's symptoms, and she survived, he said.
That tax was adopted 32 years ago to make sure that very wealthy individuals could not use deductions or tax-avoidance schemes to escape paying a fair share of taxes.
Many of these people who live tax free are real estate developers and landlords, whom Congress allows to use deductions, like that for depreciation of their buildings, to offset their incomes.
Adding to these tax woes is the alternative minimum tax, a cancer placed in the code in 1986 to ensure that wealthy people and profitable corporations did not use deductions to evade taxes.
