Both houses of the Republican-controlled Congress passed sweeping tax reform legislation on December 20. Despite the GOP’s longstanding push to repeal of the alternative minimum tax (AMT), it remains in the tax code, albeit in a tamer form . By backing off its repeal efforts yet again, Congress missed an opportunity to restore some transparency to the tax code. Given the aura of elitism surrounding the original GOP tax reform measures, many observers assume that repealing or reducing the power of the AMT only benefits the privileged . Critics of the measure are right to consider it a tax on the rich, but its story is more complicated than that. Since its enactment, it has engulfed more and more taxpayers while most of the richest Americans remain unscathed. In 1969, Congress passed the alternative minimum tax in an attempt to target 155 wealthy individuals who were able to take advantage of so many deductions, credits, and other loopholes in the tax code that they did not pay