In 1969, Joe Barr, the last of LBJ’s Trea­sury Secretary’s (he served only 30 days) became famous. He tes­ti­fied before Con­gress that 21 mil­lion­aires had paid no income tax in 1967. A tax­payer ‘revolt’ was at hand.

Con­gress, in an effort to chase down those 21, cre­ated the Min­i­mum Tax of 1969. Ulti­mately this became what you and I know as the Alter­na­tive Min­i­mum Tax. The unin­tended con­se­quence of this bend­ing of tax pol­icy is that AMT now impacts four mil­lion tax­pay­ers, 27% of whom have AGI below $200,000 per year.  But I digress.

Whether you agree with Mr. Obama’s premise that too many bil­lion­aires pay too lit­tle tax is not the point. Our tax sys­tem is com­pli­cated, thus enabling finan­cial insti­tu­tions to cre­ate tax reduc­tion strate­gies and prod­ucts. Too many Amer­i­cans rely on these pas­sive strate­gies in the name of tax sav­ings.  Remem­ber this: “Taxes can­not be reduced by tax-advantaged finan­cial instru­ments alone!” It is only through a well-coordinated and inte­grated process along with a sound eco­nomic process that taxes can be truly reduced both now and in the future.

Oh, and an econo­met­ric model that will allow you to test these proven strategies.

My pre­dic­tion: regard­less the out­come of the cur­rent tax debate, too many Amer­i­cans will over­pay their taxes this com­ing year sim­ply as a result of the posi­tion­ing of their assets, cur­rent volatil­ity of the mar­kets, and the turnover in their tax­able port­fo­lios. Don’t rely on the gov­ern­ment or tra­di­tional finan­cial plan­ning strate­gies to pro­tect you. You must do some­thing now to limit this exposure.

If you don’t…prepare to be ‘Buffeted.’