See my article on Alternative Minimum tax here
which explains why the tax was enacted.

Here is a little snippet:
The alternative minimum tax is an extra tax some people have to pay on top of the regular income tax. The original idea behind this tax was to prevent high income people from using special tax benefits to pay little or no tax.

Here is what the congress did to fix the problem temporarily:
For years, Congress has passed one-year patches aimed at minimizing the impact of the tax. For the 2007 tax year, a patch was passed on 12/20/2007, but only after the IRS had already designed its forms for 2007. The IRS will have to reprogram its forms to accommodate the law change, creating potential delays in income tax refunds for 2007.

See the Wikipedia on Alternative Minimum Tax

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