How did Congress change the AMT for 2009?
Congress revised the exemption amount used in making AMT computations in 2009 as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The AMT exemption is basically a standard deduction for taxpayers hit by the alternative minimum tax. Without the revised exemptions, an estimated 28 million taxpayers would have fallen into the grasp of the AMT—boosting their tax bills by an average of more than $2,000 each. As a group, the taxpayers would have paid an extra $50 billion in taxes. The patch that was approved by Congress and signed into law by President Obama, prevents that from happening.
