In 1967 there were a total of 155 households with incomes over $200,000 who did not pay any federal income taxes, and twenty of them were millionaires. These individuals successfully used all tax loopholes available in order to legally avoid paying taxes. The revelation attracted wide media attention and led to public shock and to the Alternative Minimum Tax, passed in 1969.

Since the law wasn’t written to account for the rising cost of living and the related lower purchasing power of the dollar in a pay check , i.e.indexed for inflation, it has come to penalize the middle-class instead.