WASHINGTON -- As singer Shania Twain would say, have you gone and done it yet? Filled out your federal tax return?

		Ann McFeatters is National Bureau chief for the Post-Gazette and The Blade of Toledo, Ohio (amcfeatters@ nationalpress.com, 1-202-662-7071).

If not, you could be in for a nasty surprise. Or maybe you already have been stung and even now are sitting in pain, eyes glazed over, hands sweaty, in a state between shock and anger. Like thousands of middle-income taxpayers, you may be finding out that you already are subject to the alternative minimum tax.

The dreaded AMT was stuck into the tax code in 1969 to prevent about 150 wealthy people from paying no tax at all, which some of them, shamefully, had figured out how to do. But because the AMT, unlike the regular income tax, is not indexed for inflation and because the Bush administration hasn't asked Congress to make corrections and Congress hasn't done so on its own, the AMT now catches millions.

Within a few years, it will snare as many as 33 million average Americans barely making ends meet who shouldn't be subject to the AMT. Some analyses show that, within the decade, nearly 95 percent of married couples with two children and incomes of between $75,000 to $100,000 will be subject to the AMT. As a result, their tax bills will be hundreds or even thousands of dollars higher than they should be.

Because of those bad, rich scofflaws, the AMT was set up to be a separate way to tax people on more of their income than regular income-tax brackets permit. With brackets of 26 percent and 28 percent, the AMT causes many Americans to lose common deductions, such as those for charity, mortgage interest and state and local taxes.

In states with high income or real estate taxes, taxpayers can be hit really hard by the AMT. In some cases, widows or widowers or divorced spouses with children who have to sell stock or a house to meet living expenses get hit by the AMT. There are cases where people sold stock last year and are being socked by the AMT for more in taxes than they got in profits from the sale. And if you're subject to the AMT (if you think you are, you have to figure out your taxes the regular way and also by the evil Form 6251), you don't have a choice -- you have to pay the higher rate.

We taxpayers are not completely alone. We have a friend at the IRS, albeit an unlikely one. Commissioner Mark Everson is a low-key, white-haired man with two adopted children who's been on the job for two years. Last year, he figured out his own taxes using computer software because it's 99 percent error-free. Whenever he ventures out in public, he increasingly hears a lot of complaints about the AMT.

He argues that Congress should do something about the AMT, which he calls a parallel or "two-track" system that not only is annoying but also is confusing and counterproductive. If Americans are frustrated by complex tax rules, Everson reasons, they are less likely to cheerfully comply or even grumpily comply.

At a recent breakfast with reporters, he repeated his favorite phrase: "Complexity obscures understanding."

Unfortunately, Everson is a manager and not a policy guy. And other than wanting to abide by common sense, Congress has no reason to do what he says it should. Alas, common sense is not always a prime motivator for the legislature.

In his proposed budget for 2006, President Bush did not ask Congress to adjust the alternative minimum tax. Why should he? He and his parents pay taxes in Texas, which doesn't have a state income tax. His brother Jeb lives in Florida, which also doesn't have a state income tax.

There are a lot of extremely irritating things about the IRS, which Everson admits, including its long delays in shutting down abusive tax shelters and in pursuing alleged non-payers -- such as one entrepreneur whom the IRS says did not pay any taxes on $450 million in income. The IRS says it is working on such problems.

But Everson is right that the AMT is totally unfair, and the more it pounces on unwary Americans who are helpless against it, the hotter the anger will flare. Congress should index the AMT or kill it. Alternatively, a minimal step victims could take would be to flee to Canada, which has no AMT, or to Europe, as Twain, a Canadian who sells huge numbers of records in the United States, has gone and done.