AMT and the Fiscal Cliff
One item that has not been talked about during the “fiscal cliff” discussions is the AMT and the affect that it could have on a significant number of people in 2012 if the “patch” isn’t done. For the last number of years Congress has annually approved a “patch” to the AMT which has minimized the negative impact of the AMT on a number of taxpayers. This approval has normally been a late December item with it’s passage being a foregone conclusion. However, with the fiscal cliff looming there has been very little talk of this patch being done. If it is not done there will be an immdiate negative impact to 30 million taxpayers’ tax returns for 2012. The extent of the impact is highly dependent on each taxpayer’s individual situation, but has been in the thousands of dollars for a number of our clients. Our approach has been to plan as if the patch was put into place, but to make everyone aware of the possible threat of it not being done.
Here’s a video from C-SPAN which goes into some pretty good detail regarding this issue: http://cs.pn/VEEJbB.
Please contact us if you have any questions.