That is not true. I made considerably more than $88K and did not pay AMT. However, I did spend a lot of time analyzing pitfalls to make sure that I did not hit AMT, shifting income to 2007 and having some bank notes pay only interest at maturity. A good CPA can help you but it needed to be done last year.

I was just putting the $88K figure out there because that is what I saw at other sites while researching this myself. In the end, I too make over the $100K mark and did get around $1,200 of the $2,600 value. If you don't have kids, you don't get hit with the child care credits (that also contribute to bumping most of us up against the AMT). If you had the ability to defer revenues to 2007 then you will have to pay taxes on those revenues next year but (as you said) migrating them to 2007 appear to have helped your positioning for this year. Good to hear that others also "plan ahead" and don't wait until the last minute to find deductions. However, there are still deductions you CAN make today that can be recorded on last years taxes. I think it has to do with contributions to IRA's, 529's or other retirement angles so if there are any Hihy owners that need $6K of revenue reductions ($3K for each spouse) in order to get under a certain income level, I think they can do some things if they talk to their own "people" (as in the recent H&R commercials)...

Very interesting thread. I'll be facing this on next year's taxes. My calculations so far say I will probably get the whole credit, despite 100k+ income, and one child.

Seems there's a 53.91% chance you won't. Ok, perhaps your taxes will work out favorably on this one.

Regardless, this tax credit experience has taught us a valuable lesson to not trust the IRS to present the full picture. In other words, to determine what credit a person will actually get is probably the best approach BEFORE investing in something eligible for a credit.

LiberalImage.com

Hard to do because early in the program (Jan, Feb, Mar. . .'06), no one knew what the IRS was going to do. It seems the catch was the AMT.

I paid more than the AMT. I got the full 3250.00 (bought the Prius in Feb., '06) in addition to a deduction for the charitable contribution of my '95 Saturn. But. . .I'm not an accountant, nor do I do my own taxes. I dropped the information at my accountant, and he sent everything in to IRS. So, I'm sorry to say, absolutely clueless.

Chance don't work like that, my or your tax situation has no relation to what the people answering this poll got.

But sarcasm does.

Truly, I don't think one could consider the results of this poll as statistically significant. My bet is there is a whole mess of neo-phyte, hybrid owning, planet hugging folks out there who don't even know this board exists.

Our sample is understandably limited.

LiberalImage.com

It isn't as much to do with your gross income, but rather your deductions and other credits. One could make over $1,000,000 a year, but not have a single deduction or credit, and not get hit by the AMT. They would also be able to get the full hybrid credit.

Best single LD trip: 35.3mpg

WaltPA, yes, the best one can say about it is that your odds of paying AMT taxes increase as your income and deductions/credits increase. One needs a fair amount of both.

I'll admit to surprise when I found out that every Form 8910 had to be accompanied by a 6251. What a nuisance for anyone who didn't come close to hitting AMT targets.

lzc - I agree on the complex forms when we were nowhere near hitting the targets. A pain, but worth it to get the credit. It seemed to me that anyone not itemizing should have been able to just pull that credit to the appropriate line without all the gyrations.

When we bought the Prius in 2004, it was a deduction and my DH was out of work 6 months that year, so our effective rate was quite low, so our deduction didn't do too much. However, it wasn't the primary reason to buy the car.

Lisa