In honor of Halloween, I want to take this opportunity to present the some of the scariest Tax facts, proposals, and possibilities:

-  As of 2001, IRS Regulations contained over 6,752,000 words—a 10% increase since 1995 and over 8 times the total number of words in the King James Bible.

- In 2002, businesses spent an estimated 2.75 billion hours complying with the federal tax system—that’s the equivalent of 1,000 employees working 40-hour weeks for more than 132 years.

- Democrats are on a crash course to increase taxes on dividends from 15% to 44.2%. If the Democrats have their way, be prepared to see more of your retirement savings whisked away by these increased taxes.

- Essentially every part of Charlie Rangel’s (D-NY) “Mother of all Tax Bills” is frightening and bad for America; except of course the repeal of the AMT.

- Democrats have tried three times to triple taxes on tobacco.  This is a punitive measure to pay for the introduction of socialized medicine and make it easier for illegal immigrants to get healthcare in the United States.

- The Phantom Income tax- Businesses of all sizes and sectors could be required to discontinue the use of LIFO (Last-in-First-Out).  They would have eight years to pay the taxes resulting from the forced revaluation of their inventory, even though they would have had no economic income.  The income might be phantom, but the $106 billion in taxes that will be paid and the associated impacts on businesses certainly won’t be.

-The scare on Small Business- First, they will be hit with the 4% surtax on a portion of their income.  Second, many of them will lose the Section 199 manufacturing deduction that lowers taxes on their business income.  And third, this is happening at the same time as incorporated businesses get an across-the-board rate cut, making it even tougher for these small business engines of job-creation to compete. 

Last night, on national television, Warren Buffett made the extraordinary announcement that he would like to pay more taxes. According to Mr. Buffett, he currently pays a 17.7% payroll and income tax and claims his situation proves that our tax system favors the rich. Unfortunately, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had facts to counter that theory, showing that the top 1% of U.S. earners account for 39% of the tax revenue.

Now, this isn’t the first time we’ve heard wealthy entrepreneurs and celebrities volunteer for higher taxes. You may remember prominent celebrities making comments in the past advocating that those with means should be able to pay more taxes per year. Regrettably, as of yet, these altruistic individuals haven’t been able to back these grand intentions up.

Well, I have good news.

I will be introducing legislation whimsically titled the “Tax Me More” Act. This bill is very simple. It would allow anyone who wants to pay higher taxes to add the desired amount (no limits!) they would like to pay to their annual tax form. Under the “Tax Me More” Act, Warren Buffett and his friends will have the unique opportunity to pay as much tax as they want without forcing anyone else to continue to feed the beast.

I believe it is high time we allow those individuals that think higher taxes are the answer to America’s problems to put their money where their mouth is.

According to Congressional Quarterly, Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) was awarded with 48 earmarks, totaling $65 Million dollars, in the Fiscal Year 2008 Appropriations Bills, and ranked her the 7^th most effective earmarker in the House of Representatives. 

Just to put Ms. Kaptur’s accomplishments into perspective, the average Democratic lawmaker is linked with $10.3 million in earmarks; while the average Republican is attributed to $8.7 million.  

However, the Sandusky Register, Rep. Kaptur’s hometown newspaper, went one step further and revealed an additional 16 earmarks that were not included in the CQ Report – her name attached to each.

This Morning the Wall Street Journal ran an editorial by former Majority Leader Dick Armey.  He expertly addresses the need for the repeal of the Alternative Minimum Tax, and he articulates why Chairman Rangel’s “Mother of All Tax Bills” is not the direction the United States needs to go.  You can find the article below.

The Mother of All Tax Hikes

By DICK ARMEY
October 29, 2007; Page A19

The great philosopher Waylon Jennings once said, "There ain't no right way to do the wrong thing." Congress should take this to heart when it comes to fixing the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT).

Both Republicans and Democrats agree that the exploding AMT is bad news for taxpayers and the economy, and its growing burden creates a political constituency for tax reform. This is especially true in high-tax blue states like California and Connecticut, where a growing number of Democrats have a serious AMT problem. That's a bit of irony, since the AMT was their 1969 scheme to raise taxes on a handful of "super-wealthy" by creating a parallel tax system. Because the AMT was not indexed to inflation then, this year it will raise taxes for 24 million Americans unless Congress acts quickly.

That's the leverage House Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel (D., N.Y.) wants to use to force a sweeping tax increase and income redistribution plan through Congress. The legislation is misleadingly titled the "Tax Reduction and Reform Act of 2007." Its informal moniker, "the mother of all tax reform," gives us a better sense of the profound impact it will have on American taxpayers and the economy.

Mr. Rangel's bill starts simply enough with a one-year extension of AMT relief provisions. However, the Democrats have sown the seeds for additional taxes with their "paygo" rules, which require all tax cuts to be offset by revenue increases elsewhere. For a temporary $40 billion AMT fix, Mr. Rangel has targeted one of the more productive and dynamic sectors of our economy -- the financial-services industry -- with several new provisions that will increase taxes, including higher taxes on so-called "carried interest," which will affect hedge funds and possibly other partnerships.

Beyond this year's temporary AMT patch, Mr. Rangel's bill would permanently end the AMT in 2008. That's a good idea, but the static price tag for this "relief" is where the trouble starts. Mr. Rangel's bill increases tax rates by 4% on individuals earning above $150,000 and couples earning over $200,000. This increase will come on top of the rollback of the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts. The combined result: America's top income-tax rate will skyrocket from the current 35% rate to a top rate of 44%. Let's be clear -- that's a 25% tax hike.

So much for low-tax America and high-tax Europe; this would put the nation's top rates among the highest of all developed nations. This is an especially heavy burden for American farmers and small businessmen who pay taxes as individuals. According to an Oct. 25 memo from Ways and Means Committee Ranking Member Jim McCrery (R., La.), the net result will be the biggest tax increase in U.S. history, totaling $3.5 trillion in higher taxes over the next 10 years.

Mr. Rangel does shuffle the corporate-tax code, dropping the top rate to 30.5% from the current 35%. It's rather refreshing to see that he recognizes that America's corporate-tax rate is too high and hurts our competitiveness. But this glimmer of progress is swamped by the plan's range of new taxes on capital investment and punitive measures towards American companies that operate globally.

Contrary to its deceptive name, Mr. Rangel's bill is not tax relief, but a breathtaking tax increase. And it is not tax reform, but just another round of new complexity layered on top of the existing tax code, with tweaked provisions, changed definitions and redistributed income to favored groups through carefully crafted new subsections. Compliance with the 60,000-page tax code costs Americans seven billion man-hours and over $140 billion in fees to accountants and consultants, all before a single check is cut to the government. While the AMT may be repealed by this bill, the inefficiencies and burdens that keep Washington lobbyists employed full time remain.

Thankfully, there's an alternative to Mr. Rangel's redistributive approach, and it's being offered by a group of pro-growth tax reformers in the House of Representatives. "The Taxpayer Choice Act," is being offered by Reps. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.), Michele Bachmann (R., Minn.), Jeb Hensarling (R., Texas), and John Campbell (R., Calif.) that repeals the AMT while fundamentally reforming the tax code.

These young Republican legislative entrepreneurs offer taxpayers the choice of remaining in the current system with its itemized deductions, charts and schedules, or moving into a greatly simplified system that eliminates all deductions and loopholes while offering only two simple rates. All taxpayers would have a standard individual deduction of $12,500, and individuals earning below $100,000 would pay a flat 10% of income, while individuals earning above that would pay 25%. Calculating taxes would take less time than brewing a pot of coffee.

Last year I observed on this page that, on fiscal policy, voters could not see a dime's worth of difference between the two political parties. How things have changed. Mr. Rangel's mother-of-all tax increases is another of the same, tired, "tax-the-rich" revenue-raising schemes of past Democratic Congresses. It focuses on redistributing income through the tax code at the expense of economic growth and tax simplicity. Such tax schemes have a high political-demagogy coefficient that can temporarily satisfy liberal constituencies, but they always backfire in practice.

In the early 1990s, I remember watching Sen. George Mitchell sing the praises of a new luxury tax that would "tax the rich." But as any Economics 101 student might have predicted, the immediate effect of this luxury tax was a sharp decline in sales of "luxuries," particularly new boats, and a dramatic loss of boat-related manufacturing and service jobs. It was less than a year before Sen. Mitchell was working to lift the tax so his constituents in boatyards in Maine could get back to work.

The Taxpayer Choice Act, on the other hand, is based on the belief that the only legitimate purpose of the tax code is to raise the revenue necessary to fund the legitimate expense of government; it is not a place for social engineering or rewarding favored political constituencies. It treats taxpayers with dignity, and moves us in the direction of eliminating double taxation, which encourages capital formation, savings and investment.

I have long advocated a tax code that is simple, fair, flat and honest. Income should be taxed once, and only once, thereby promoting economic growth through increased savings and investment. Sadly, Mr. Rangel's Democratic vision for tax policy takes giant steps away from that ideal. Republicans have a competing vision that offers taxpayers an escape from both the AMT and many of the heavy compliance costs of today's tax code.

This small step may still be too big for the income redistributors in our nation's capital. Until American citizens beat Washington bureaucrats and special interests, taxpayers will remain trapped in a tax code built by and for special interests. Finally, at least, they have a choice between two fundamentally different visions. Let's hope the taxpayer wins this debate.

Mr. Armey, Republican majority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2001, is chairman of FreedomWorks Foundation.

The Republican Staff on the Ways and Means Committee put this fact sheet together, I feel it is quite enlightening, and wanted to share it with you.

When Chairman Rangel introduced his long-awaited tax legislation yesterday morning, there were certain things he conveniently forgot to mention. Among the things the Democratic Majority doesn’t want you to know about the “Mother of All Tax Hikes”:

1. MARRIAGE PENALTY ON STEROIDS:  The bill imposes a surtax of 4% on single filers with incomes above $150,000 and $200,000 for married couples filing jointly.  After years of fighting efforts to repeal the marriage penalty, the Majority is taking the battle to a new level by putting a massive new marriage penalty into the tax code.

2. KISS YOUR DEDUCTIONS GOODBYE:  The surtax is imposed on adjusted gross income, not taxable income.  That may sound like an arcane difference, but it is an important one.  Now, when filling out your tax return, you add up your income to get your adjusted gross income and then subtract deductions for things like charitable contributions, mortgage interest, state and local taxes, medical expenses, un-reimbursed business expenses, or your standard deduction.  But the surtax is applied to the AGI before you take deductions. So it has the effect of taxing people on items that they can ordinarily deduct. 

3. MAKING THE U.S. A LEADER IN HIGH TAXES:  Combined with the implicit sunset of the lower personal marginal tax rates after 2010, the Democrats’ plan would have the effect of raising the top personal federal marginal income tax rate to more than 44%.  The other 29 OECD countries – essentially other developed nations - have an average personal top marginal tax rate of 35.7%.  In fact, only five OECD countries would have higher top marginal tax rates in 2011 than the U.S. if the Rangel bill is enacted. 

4. SMALL BUSINESS TRIPLE-WHAMMY:  Millions of Americans who own small businesses and who pay taxes on that income on their individual tax returns are going to face a triple-whammy.  First, they will be hit with the 4% surtax on some of their income.  Second, many of them will lose the Section 199 manufacturing deduction that lowers taxes on their business income.  And third, this is happening at the same time as incorporated businesses get an across-the-board rate cut, making it even tougher for these small business engines of job-creation to compete. 

5. FUZZY MATH:  A summary of the Chairman’s bill indicates it repeals the AMT but includes a provision called “Limitation of Benefits” to keep high income individuals from benefiting too much from repeal.  But the Limitation of Benefits RAISES $36 billion more than it would “cost” to repeal the AMT.    So even the alleged tax cut is by any definition a tax hike. 

6. IF A TREE FALLS IN A FOREST…. Like the famous Zen question, “what is the sound of one hand clapping?” the Chairman’s bill forces us to ponder how to give tax cuts to people who don’t pay taxes.  The answer is to have other hard-working Americans pay more taxes so the government can write a bigger check to folks who have no income tax liability.  The Chairman’s bill would spend close to $40 billion over the next decade in various forms of “tax cuts” for (e.g., payments from IRS to) people who don’t pay income taxes.

7. TAXING PHANTOM INCOME:  The bill would require businesses of all sizes and sectors to discontinue the use of an accounting regime for their inventory known as LIFO (Last-in-First-Out).  They would have eight years to pay the taxes resulting from the forced revaluation of their inventory, even though they would have had no economic income.  The income might be phantom, but the $106 billion in taxes that will be paid and the associated impacts on businesses certainly won’t be.

8. CAPITAL LOSSES:  Current law provides a top tax rate on long-term capital gains of 15%.  The surtax, because it is applied to Adjusted Gross Income, has the effect of raising the tax rate on long-term gains by another 4% or more for millions of Americans.  This assault on the jobs and growth-producing 2003 tax cut presages what lies ahead as we approach the sunset of the Bush tax cuts.

9. GETTING A HEAD START ON A RUN IN THE WRONG DIRECTION:  In 2003, Congress lowered the top tax rate on dividends to 15%.  All signals suggest that the Democrats want to let those lower rates expire at the end of 2010, sending the top tax rate on dividends back to the top marginal tax rate, which will be 39.6%.  As a helpful head start, the Chairman’s bill subjects dividends to the surtax, so taxpayers can begin to get accustomed to seeing more of their retirement savings eroded by taxes, setting the stage for the leap to 44% or more after 2010. 

10. THE WRONG CHOICE FOR AMERICAN COMPETITIVENESS:  The Democrats claim this bill is responsive to Treasury Secretary Paulson’s efforts to advance U.S. competitiveness.  But the Secretary never embraced a proposal to delay the ability of businesses to take deductions for legitimate business expenses.  Despite the Majority’s rhetoric to the contrary, this bill will make it much harder for American companies to compete abroad.

Today, I alongside Reps. Paul Ryan, Jeb Hensarling, and Michele Bachmann published an article in the New York Post, about our AMT Repeal & Taxpayer Choice Act. 

As I am sure many of you agree, the AMT is Washington’s most recent example of the Will Rogers adage: “Be thankful we’re not getting all the government we’re paying for”.

Click here to read our article and intended proposal to Make Taxes Simpler & Fairer.

The word is that Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee Charlie Rangel (D-NY) will introduce he is calling the “Mother of all Tax Bills” tomorrow.

Rumors are that it will do two good things:
        1.)    Eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT);
        2.)    Lower the Corporate tax rate from 35% to 30.5%

However, it is also rumored to do many bad things including:
        1.)    New higher rates for all incomes of $150,000(single) and $200,000(joint);
        2.)    Repeal many business tax deductions including the LIFO inventories and section 199 manufacturer’s deduction.

This is clearly not the entire bill but one thing is for sure; it will increase taxes by nearly a trillion dollars.  I don’t need to explain to you that it will take a lot of taxpayer’s paying a lot more taxes to make up for a trillion dollars.

Monday, the House voted on HR 189, which establishes the Paterson Great Falls National Historical Park, in the city of Paterson, New Jersey.  Normally this wouldn’t raise many eyebrows, but the manner this legislation was forced through is just too much to overlook.

In 2006 the National Park Service (NPS) stated in a survey that “the Great Falls Historic District meets the criterion for national significance, but does not meet criteria for suitability, feasibility, or need for NPS management.”  Despite the objections of the NPS it was pushed through the Committee on Natural Resources.  Not only does it defy the NPS recommendations and place 109 acres under federal control, but it assures that millions of taxpayer funds will be funneled into this region of New Jersey.

How could something so blatantly counterproductive be forced onto the floor you ask?

… John Lawrence, Chief of Staff for Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Paterson, NJ native.  Mr. Lawrence sat in during the Committee hearings regarding H.R. 189, he also was recognized by Chairman Rahall, saying “there is another distinguished visitor present who happens to be the Chief of Staff to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr. John Lawrence, who must call this his hometown, I believe, and has been back there nodding very strongly ‘yes’ to everything that the gentleman from New Jersey has been saying.” 

All the while,  the majority leaders wonder why their approval rating is so low.

Recently, Sen. Hillary Clinton’s earmark for the Woodstock Museum has gotten a lot of attention courtesy of the Republican Presidential Debate. 

Sen. Clinton and Sen. Schumer both Democrats from New York, included this million dollar earmark in the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education spending bill.  This earmark was destined to create a museum honoring the 1969 Woodstock music festival.  Thankfully, Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) managed to kill this earmark by a voice vote on the Senate floor.

As we have seen time and time again, USA Today uncovered that Allen Gerry, the owner of the Woodstock site, where the museum would have been constructed, made large contributions to Schumer’s and Clinton’s campaigns after the earmark was included in the bill.

On another note, an earmark I questioned on the House floor by Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), managed to slip by once again on the floor of the Senate. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) offered an amendment to strike Mr. Rangel’s infamous “Monument to Me”, a $2 million dollar earmark to create the “Charles B Rangel Center for Public Service and the Charles Rangel Library at the City College of New York”, from the bill.

After his amendment failed, Sen. DeMint commented that, “Washington has reached the point of absurdity when a member of Congress can create a monument to himself at taxpayer expense,” I’m embarrassed that my Senate colleagues didn’t have the courage today to stand up for taxpayers.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

On Tuesday, the House passed a four-year extension of the Internet Tax Freedom Act.  The billed passed by a vote of 405-2, but not before I and several of my colleagues argued for a permanent prohibition of Internet taxes. 

Rep. Mel Watt (D-NC), one of the bill’s cosponsor’s, made it clear that, “this bill is pro-consumer, pro-innovation and pro-technology." If that is so, then there should be no problem with making the ban permanent. 

It seems that Mr. Watt’s reservations revolve around the possibility of being unable to tax the internet indefinitely.  He stated that, "Four years from now everything in life may be done on the Internet. We might have a virtual world out there and we might not be able to tax anything."

Four years from now we will be again fighting to keep the Internet tax free , and it is evident that Mr. Watt believes in taxing the internet, but only once we see its full potential.

I firmly believe that this ban should have been made permanent

Yesterday I joined by Rep. Paul Ryan and other members of the Budget Committee and the Republican Study Committee to announce the creation of the “Budget Boondoggle Award”.  This prestigious honor is reserved only for the most outrageous examples of misuse of taxpayer dollars, unnecessary earmarks, and duplicative and ineffective programs across the Federal system.

In my opinion these are some of the most glaring examples:

The Award for the Most Duplicative, Ineffective, and Inappropriate Programs

Technological Corporate Welfare (Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations Bill).

• The Advanced Technology Program [ATP] is recognized as one of the worst forms of corporate welfare, and the President has proposed to eliminate it.
• As of 2005, 39 Fortune 500 companies had received a total of $732 million in ATP subsidies, with IBM alone receiving $127 million.
• One survey showed that 65 percent of ATP applicants did not even bother trying to procure private funding before lining up at the “Federal trough.”
• Although authorizing legislation terminates the program, this appropriations bill still funds it at $93 million for fiscal year 2008.

The Award for Most Government Waste

More FEMA Funds Squandered (Homeland Security Appropriations Bill).

•  FEMA spent $3.5 million to melt $24 million worth of ice it had purchased but did not need – for an “ice-capade” totaling $27.5 million.
• Fraudulent FEMA payments cited by the Government Accountability Office (GAO)include:      

1. $17 million in rental assistance paid to individuals to whom FEMA had already provided free housing in trailers or apartments;
2. $20 million in duplicate payments to thousands of individuals who claimed damages to the same property from both Hurricanes Katrina and Rita;
3. Housing to 10 individuals in apartments in Plano, TX, while these individuals received $46,000 to cover out-of-pocket housing expenses.

Stay tuned for more examples of waste, fraud, and abuse of your tax dollars.

According to the Oregonian, Rep. David Wu (D-OR) directed more than $ 2 million dollars in T-shirt contracts to InSport International, a clothing manufacturer in Mr. Wu’s district.  Unfortunately, these shirts are prone to melting and burning in high heat, thus rendering them dangerous and useless to soldiers in combat.

According to Captain Lynn Welling, the head surgeon of the 1^st Marine Logistic Group, the polyester in these “melting shirts” adheres to the skin in intense heat, essentially creating a second skin which leads to horrific disfiguring burns.

Rep. Wu earmarked the contract into the 2006 Defense Appropriations Bill. Due to the design flaw, the Marines shortly thereafter banned the use of polyester shirts for use in combat, or anywhere outside the protected “Green Zone” bases.  However, because of Mr. Wu’s earmark the Marines were forced to buy 87,000 of the banned shirts. 

While the idea of a more comfortable shirt for our troops is commendable, the flaws of the shirts’ design were left uninvestigated.  This is the purpose for process of competitively bidding contracts… to get the best product possible.

By the way, shortly after his earmarks passed in the Defense Appropriations Bill, Rep. Wu received nearly $15,000 in campaign contributions from InSport executives.

A recent report in the Seattle Times revealed that several Washington lawmakers are in the business of doing favors for campaign contributors and raising money at the expense of the Navy and Coast Guard.

According to the article, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wa.), Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wa.), and Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wa.) are responsible for both funneling $17.65 to a small boat company in Washington State and forcing the Navy and Coast Guard to buy boats for which they had no use, and this has been going on for years.

In 1999, Reps. Dicks and Baird added a line to the Defense appropriations bill to requiring the Navy to purchase a $4 million dollar high speed boat from Guardian Marine, a small maritime manufacturer.  The Navy had no use for it then and, not surprisingly; this boat has never been used in a combat role.

In 2002, Sen. Murray added a $4.65 million earmark in the Defense Appropriations bill and forced the Coast Guard to buy a boat that was “Currently-developed 85-foot fast patrol craft that is manufactured in the United States”, you guessed it…Guardian Marine was the only manufacturer of such a craft.  Subsequently, the Coast Guard evaluated the boat several times and determined that it would not be useful as their mission changed after 9/11.

Once again, in 2002, the article reports that plans by Sen. Murray and Reps.  Dicks and Baird were under way to have the Navy buy two boats, one being in the experimental stage, called the ‘Sealion’.  The two boats combined were worth $8.4 million. However, even before the prototypes of these ships were completed, the navy determined they were unnecessary.  Attempts were made to give the Ships to the University of Washington, but they didn’t want them either. Until recently, they sat unused and are now sitting at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Seattle.

If they hadn’t learned their lesson, in 2004, Sen. Murray, Reps. Dicks and Baird cosponsored an earmark worth $4.5 million for a fourth boat. It was designed for torpedo retrieval at the Naval Base in Keyport, Washington.  It has since been reassigned to a base in California for evaluation.

These Members of Congress have kept Guardian Marine in business since the 1990’s, thanks to taxpayer dollars.  I bet you didn’t know that your tax dollars were being used to keep a company in business. What’s more is that in the past 4 years, executives of Guardian Marine and their subcontractors have made $125,000 in campaign contributions to Congress members. 

The debate in Congress has focused on how to "make up" for the revenues that would have been collected if taxpayers were held liable for this mistake.  This assumes the federal government is somehow owed these revenues -- and that America's taxpayers should foot the bill.  I think this is wrong.  We must change the debate to put taxpayers first -- not the government.

That's why Congressman Campbell and I, together with the Republican Study Committee, have introduced the Taxpayer Choice Act.  Instead of simply patching the AMT for a year, as has been done in recent Congresses, it eliminates the AMT altogether.  It also takes a big step toward making our ridiculously complicated tax code simpler and more efficient.  This will start us on the path toward a 21st century tax system that keeps us competitive in the global economy.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)
Ranking Member
Committee on the Budget 

Today I was joined by Congressmen Paul Ryan (WI), Ranking Member of the House Budget Committee and Jeb Hensarling (TX), Chairman of the Republican Study Committee, and Rep. Michele Bachmann (MN) in introducing the AMT Repeal and Taxpayer Choice Act. This legislation is designed to repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax, and at the same time, give all taxpayers the choice of filing their taxes under a new, simplified tax system.

In crafting this legislation we made sure that it would accomplish these three goals. That it will:  1.) Repeal the AMT and make sure it stays gone. 2.) Not raise taxes 3.) Not engage in class warfare, asking others to take a financial hit to “Pay for” tax relief for others.  I think we have succeeded in accomplishing these goals. Below are some important points about the Taxpayer Choice Act.

 The Taxpayer Choice Act will fully and permanently repeal the current AMT

 Taxpayers can choose to file their taxes under the current system or pay  a new alternative simplified tax with two rates and no deductions

 There is a 10% rate for joint incomes below $100,000 and a 25% marginal rate for joint incomes above $100,000

 This bill will make permanent the 2001 and 2003 tax reductions and lower rates on capital gains and dividends.

This is an incredibly important piece of legislation considering the number of taxpayers that could be forced to pay the AMT in 2007. Also, at the same time, it keeps our tax revenue at its historical percentage of GDP. Without this legislation, government spending will increase in terms of our overall economy and individuals will be required to pay more taxes to keep up with this spending.

Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Charles Rangel (D-NY), has announced his intention to present “the mother of all tax bills” in the coming weeks. This Democrat proposal will effectively keep all tax increases and merely redistribute who has to pay them.

The proposal I am advocating rejects the idea that we need to continually raise taxes on people over 10 years, not only on an absolute basis but also by percentage.

I encourage you to visit the RSC website to see more details about our AMT Proposal, Click here