The legislation, known as the Alternative Minimum Tax Relief Act of 2008 (H.R. 6275) and authored by House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY), aims to ensure that the number of taxpayers subject to the AMT will not increase.

According to Rangel, failure to pass this legislation would result in more than 25 million families facing a tax increase this year.

“The AMT is an outdated, unfair tax that should not even be part of our tax code,” commented Chairman Rangel.

He went on to argue that:

“However, in the seven years the Bush Administration has been in office, they have not given us a tax reform bill to do what everyone in this House would want to and remove this fiscal burden from more than 25 million taxpayers. So now we have to pass a so-called ‘patch’ to make sure these families don’t see their taxes increase through no fault of their own.

"The main difference between Democrats and Republicans is that Democrats don’t believe we should pay for the cost of this bill by adding to the national debt. We shouldn’t go to China and Japan and ask them once again to bail us out. Instead, we should take a look at the tax code and see what loopholes we can close to repair the AMT – at least for this year – without passing this burden on to our children and grandchildren.”

Rangel claims that the legislation provides one-year relief from the AMT without adding to the deficit because it is paid for by closing loopholes in the tax code, encouraging tax compliance, and repealing excessive government subsidies given to oil companies.