It ought to be repealed outright. However, it traps more taxpayers each succeeding year and thereby generates revenue. It is, practically speaking, impossible to determine without an unreasonable effort. Generally the only time the true amount of AMT tax can be calculated, if indeed it can be calculated at all, is annually during the tax preparation process. It is a parallel tax universe with significant impact and almost no ability to be predicted with any degree of certainty and economy of effort.
Few taxpayers can describe it at all.
A substantial number of professional tax practitioners cannot accurately describe it. It would be far preferable, nationally, for the tax to be wiped out and to allow a relatively few persons to pay no tax at all than to cause the pain and suffering on the scale it currently produces. The AMT may be the single most unknown or unexpected tax and strikes taxpayers in many cases solely because of their state of residence. If it is politically impossible to abolish the tax, the minimum changes should be to exempt state and local income taxes from the calculations and index the brackets for inflation. Change underpayment rules for the individual estimated tax safe harbor .