Merry Christmas, IRS

Gentlemen, you finally may begin your reprogramming. Congress enacted the AMT patch without offsets. What was politically not possible eight weeks ago suddenly became overwhelmingly popular. Unless IRS was just pulling our legs, refunds will be delayed by at least a month, although the Service promised to have revised tax forms posted within 72 hours.

Note that the temporary AMT patch will be a bit higher for the 2007 tax year than it was in 2006: $44,350 singles, $66,250 marrieds filing joint. So once again we haven't failed to inflation-adjust the AMT exemption, we only failed to do the right thing on a permanent basis.

Same time, next year?