NEW YORK (CNN/Money) – It's understandable if you have your hackles up about recent proposals to nix the federal deduction for state and local taxes and to downsize the mortgage-interest tax break.

There certainly would be homeowners who lose out. But not all homeowners would face higher tax bills as a result – especially if they're among the increasing number of taxpayers likely to fall under the Alternative Minimum Tax in the next five to 10 years.

That's because the AMT disallows many tax breaks, including the deductions for state and local income tax and property tax.

The AMT does allow the mortgage-interest tax break, but since by its nature paying AMT means paying more tax, the deduction may not be as valuable relative to your total tax bill.

And even if you don't get snagged by AMT, your mortgage-interest deduction may be less valuable than you think.

Barring a permanent fix or continued temporary ones that have to be voted on each year, the AMT is projected to snag a dramatically higher number of taxpayers, increasingly from middle-income households.

Bottom line: "More and more people will be getting less and less benefit from the state and local tax deduction," said David Lifson, chair of the New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants tax-reform committee.

So if the proposal by President Bush's Tax Reform Advisory Panel to eliminate the state and local tax deduction ever comes to pass, chances are for the crowd vulnerable to AMT, they would have lost it anyway.

And if you're in the camp that favors making President Bush's tax cuts permanent, keep in mind, too, that lower tax rates mean higher income, which also can make you more vulnerable to AMT.

The panel also recommended converting the mortgage-interest deduction to a credit equal to 15 percent of the interest paid on a mortgage loan up to $412,000.

So if you're in a tax bracket above 15 percent, you'll get less of a tax break with the credit than you do with the current deduction.

But consider this: if you currently itemize deductions on your 1040 primarily because of your mortgage interest, you may have less compelling reason to do so in future years.

That's because the amount of your monthly payment that goes to mortgage interest declines as you pay down more of your principal, while the amount of the standard deduction grows every year. When your individual deductions no longer exceed the standard deduction, there's no reason to itemize, so you wouldn't end up using the mortgage-interest deduction anyway.

There are other factors to consider when assessing the proposed changes to the mortgage tax break. Under the panel's proposals, you not only would see the mortgage-interest deduction convert to a credit. You'd also trade the standard deduction for a family credit. Those credits are dollar-for-dollar reductions of the taxes you owe, which is more valuable than a deduction, which just reduces your taxable income by a percentage equal to your top tax rate.

Indeed, because of these factors, if you've owned your home a number of years and take the standard deduction because you don't pay enough in mortgage interest and state and local taxes to justify itemizing, you may do better under the panel's proposal, said Neil Allen, a spokesman for tax publisher CCH.

Though the panel has taken a lot of heat for touching sacred cow tax breaks, it did make one popular recommendation: eliminate the AMT. Doing so is estimated to cost $1.2 trillion in lost revenue over 10 years.

That's in part why panel members looked to the mortgage and state and local tax deductions as ways to help pay for AMT elimination. In 2004, together they cost the federal government $107 billion in revenue, according to the General Accounting Office.

Of course, whether you'd do better or worse overall under tax reform won't be determined by any one change to the tax code, since there are so many variables that factor into your tax liability.

Indeed, CCH found that between two taxpayers with similar financial situations, one could do better under the proposals and one could do worse.

Keep in mind, the reform panel's suggestions are not likely to be adopted wholesale and may not even be adopted in part. Nor are they the only way to reform the tax code.

But in the ensuing debate over tax reform, remember, Lifson said, "It's a Rubik's Cube. You're dealing with the future and an enormous number of variables. There are several right answers."