The Alternative Minimum Tax trips up greater numbers of taxpayers every year, partly because the income level at which it kicks in hasn't been adjusted for inflation since 1993. The new tax law exempts small businesses from the corporate version of the AMT, but the administration and tax-writers in Congress passed by the opportunity to help individual AMT-payers.

The AMT, critics say, is fiendishly complex. It was designed to ensure that high-income taxpayers with hefty write-offs pay at least some tax by not allowing various deductions available under the regular income tax.

However inflation and the surging stock market are pushing greater numbers of middle-income and upper-middle-income taxpayers into the clutches of the AMT every year.

• Both AMT rates and the AMT exemption -- $45,000 for married couples and $33,750 for singles -- have been stuck at the same levels since 1993.

• About 630,000 of the more than 100 million taxpayers will get hit by the AMT this year -- but under current law that will grow to 6.2 million by 2006, according to Congress's Joint Tax Committee.

• AMT rates are 26 percent for taxable income up to $175,000, and 28 percent beyond that.

Some tax experts argue the new law makes the AMT problem even worse. Families in the lowest, 15 percent income-tax bracket who slash their tax bills by taking advantage of the new tuition and child credits could wind up paying at least some taxes at the higher AMT minimum rate of 26 percent.

Source: Vanessa O'Connell, "Tax Changes May Grant Benefits, But Fail to Address the AMT Hex," Wall Street Journal, August 8, 1997.