IRS Offers Update Regarding Filing Timelines for Alternative Minimum Tax Patch

Written on January 7, 2008 by Tripp in IRS Musing

On December 19, 2007, Congress passed the Tax Increase Prevention Act of 2007 "patching" the Alternative Minimum Tax, and the legislation was recently signed into law by the President. This "patch" will effect approximately 13.5 million taxpayers in the United States. Basically, the patch increased the Alternative Minimum Tax exemption for all filing statuses since the AMT was not indexed for inflation when it was created.

So who does this effect? The "AMT patch" will affect those taxpayers who file the following forms:

Form 8863, Education Credits;
Form 5695, Residential energy credits;
Schedule 2, Form 1040A, Child and Dependent Care Expenses for Form 1040A filers;
Form 8396, Mortgage Interest Credit;
Form 8859, District of Columbia First-Time Homebuyer Credit.

Basically, what is happening is the IRS is having to re-program their computer systems to take the new law into consideration. Therefore, those taxpayers who file any of the forms above will have to wait until at least February 11, 2008 to file their tax returns. Taxpayers who do not use any of the forms above may begin filing their returns after January 11, 2008.