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Because Congress waited until late December to “patch” the Alternative Minimum Tax, some taxpayers will run into delays in filing their returns and receiving refunds. Sen Charles Grassley is complaining about that and blaming the Democrats for procrastinating.

What we really need is for Grassley or someone else with clout to craft a better solution to the problem.

The AMT was conceived in 1969 to prevent high-income Americans from dodging tax liabilities. In one more example of unintended consequences, the effect morphed over the years and, because the AMT wasn’t indexed to inflation, more and more middle-class citizens have been caught in its net.

If that’s all there is to it, a solution shouldn’t be too hard to figure out.

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, however, the AMT story is a bit more complicated. “More than half of the current AMT problem is due to the effects of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts,” the organization says, “which pushed millions more taxpayers onto the AMT and more than doubled the amount of tax owed under the AMT in the absence of AMT relief.

“These effects should come as no surprise to supporters of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, who used the AMT to mask the true cost of those tax cuts.”

Last year, 3.5 million people paid the AMT. Without the latest patch, the number would have risen to 23.4 million, according to the Tax Policy Center. The average taxpayer would have been assessed about $2,000 in alternative minimum tax.

Nobody wants to repeal the whole act, because that would cause a major revenue problem. But let’s look at other choices. For example, the CBPP suggests retaining the AMT for earners above a certain level, such as $200,000, and exempting everyone making less than that amount.

That would return the AMT to its original purpose. And if the loss of revenues creates problems, we’ll just have to look at tax cuts and spending in a more realistic way.