You missed my point. By pre-exercising my ISOs and filing an 83(b) with the IRS showing that the exercise price and the market price were in fact the same when

You missed my point. By pre-exercising my ISOs and filing an 83(b) with the IRS showing that the exercise price and the market price were in fact the same when I exercised, the gain was zero, even for the purposes of AMT. Not everyone will be so lucky to be in that situation where the prices match, but I was.