What are alternate minimal tax and payroll tax?

Question

You hear these terms thrown in in each political debate regarding taxes...
What are these things how do they each effect the way taxes are distributed on the society?
Lastly what is so wrong for thepepople who had the highest tax increase when the taxes went, up getting the biggest cut when the taxes go down? ( I am not one of those people, If I was, I would have personal CPAs answering these questions and I would not be asking this on Yahoo answers.)
Seems to me like if each time the taxes increase the most on the high income segment when they go up and decrease the most for the lowest icome people when thet go down, with each cycle the burden will kepp shifting more and more unfairly to people who have been paying the most taxes!

Answer 1

The AMT was devised a number of years ago as a way to make sure those with high incomes were paying tax (since they could most often find ways out of it through deductions and credits).

The problem is that the AMT has not been amended to adjust for wage inflation, and so it now smacks a number of middle class families, which results only in an added burden on those who were already paying income tax.

The tax system in the U.S. is progressive in nature, meaning it will always 'sock it to the rich'.