Accounting News FeedsIndividual Tax | Accounting News Feeds 2012-11-05 08:00:41

The best hope for a deal to avoid the “fiscal cliff” may lie with the alternative minimum tax,an obscure provision of the tax code that is about to become alarmingly relevant to millions of middle-class taxpayers.

Unless Congress acts by the end of the year, more than 26 million households will for the first time face the AMT, which threatens to tack $3,700, on average, onto taxpayers’ bills for the current tax year. Because those people have never paid the AMT, they have no idea they are in its crosshairs — put there by a broader stalemate over tax policy that has kept Congress from limiting the AMT’s reach.