Subject: Re: Jain sale for those who don't have Barrons
worst-case maybe 40-45% of $100K+ taxpayers will be affected post-TCJA

Wether one gets hits with AMT or not depends on the sources of income in addition to the total taxable income of an individual. So congrats to you for not getting hit with AMT.

But here is the history of AMT from the Tax Foundation:

The AMT was enacted in 1969 to keep wealthy taxpayers from using what was viewed as too many tax preferences. In 1969, U.S. Treasury Secretary Joseph Barr testified that in 1966, 155 high-income people paid zero income tax. Instead of eliminating the tax preferences that enabled these taxpayers to reduce their taxable income, Congress created a minimum tax.

Regardless of exactly how many tax payers are hit with AMT today, any reasonable person would conclude that it affects orders of magnitude more people (numbering in millions) than originally intended (155 people). Everyone is aware of this but the federal govt refuses to fix it because they like the revenue from it.