The mortgage interest deduction - sacred or not?

[EGB News]

Although about two-thirds of American households own a home, only one-quarter of them claim the deduction.

In 2015 . . . the federal government spent $71 billion on the MID, and households earning more than $100,000 receive almost 90 percent of the benefits. Since the value of the deduction rises as the cost of one’s mortgage increases, the policy essentially pays upper-middle-class and rich households to buy larger and more expensive homes.


https://www.theatlantic.com/business/ar ... on/526635/

[ChromaKey]

We should probably start talking about war spending and what it has done to the national debt and/or deficit, as well as tax cuts for corporations and a megawealthy class of individuals in everything from investment return rates to offshore shelters, first, before squeezing more from the homeowner class. Homeownership is prosperity, it's worth investing in as a society.

[Tarryall]

Canada does not have it and has equivalent rates of home ownership. I prefer a simple tax code and eliminating this would help.

[Josey]

Canada does not have it and has equivalent rates of home ownership. I prefer a simple tax code and eliminating this would help.

Agree. I've been saying this for years and years.

Every single time this topic comes up, the emotional, anti-logical, mathematically illiterate, progressive left jumps in to vigorously defend the existing mortgage deduction for the upper middle class. Ditto.

I disagree with one point in the article though, deductions are not government spending, but refundable tax credits are the same as spending. You trade off fewer deductions to get lower tax bracket rates, which spreads taxes around more evenly and fairly to everyone.

[Tarryall]

And if they grandfather it out next year, there just might be a surge of buying and building. (Not that Colorado needs this surge.)

[cabinish]

Any economic surge would be short-lived though. Interest expense offsets income for landlords too, they might dump
those investments en mass.

[ChromaKey]

Well if we don't want to continue to do it because it's socially responsibility, then perhaps we should do it because why should we be taxed to live, and, simultaneously, taxed for someone else's profits?

[Josey]

Because we need all the tax revenue from you we can get... for others' social benefit reasons.

[ChromaKey]

Because we need all the tax revenue from you we can get... for others' social benefit reasons.

Yes, and there are many many more equitable places to start before hitting societies, families, and communities in the gut with an economic haircut. And it's not as if property taxes aren't already going up. Mine just rose 25% in one year.

[Josey]

Don't assume your property taxes are going up 25%, that was just an assessment. I'd be more worried about the future Empire mine lost revenues if I lived in Clear Creek.