Who Are "The Rich?"

As the Alternative Minimum Tax debate looms, here are a couple of interesting factoids.

According to the Department of Labor/BLS, the Wisconsin mean annual wage (all 2.7 million earners) is $35,600.00.

So a two-earner household (mean wages for both) will be knocking down about $71K/year.

Now to Wikipedia for the AMT discussion:

Over the coming decade, a growing number of taxpayers will become liable for the AMT. In 2010, if nothing is changed, one in five taxpayers will have AMT liability and nearly every married taxpayer with income between $100,000 and $500,000 will owe the alternative tax

Note the $100K bottom-end.

That $100K is just a touch above the income of 2 mean-wage Wisconsin teachers (about $83K).

So if a teacher ($41.5K) marries a Financial Analyst ($67K) they lose the lottery on AMT.

By the way, if you want to do a very interesting comparo, let's take the couple above and see what they'd be earning in 1970 (inflation-adjusted)--

Voila!! $20,892.00

So--did your parents have to pay the AMT?