No it is not.
Yes. End it, or at least reduce it to $250,000 and end it later. Also end all Federal aid to colleges, and yank non-profit status from Big College as well.
We should have a national sales tax and no income tax at all. If we can’t do that, the next best thing is one tax rate and no deductions for anything.
I would disagree that the mortgage deduction is bad. It actually favors people WHO ARE MORE VESTED IN THE ECONOMY AND AMERICA’S WELL BEING. And these people having more disposable income by having their taxes reduced are more likely to contribute to causes, candidates and efforts which further conservatism.
Call that government engineering, but it mirrors solid economics.
Anything that restricts the government from confiscating income legally earned by American citizens is good — not just for the person who legitimately earned it, but for liberty and our Republic as well.
Nope
Trim it to $50,000
Class envy. It always gets the hoi polloi all worked up.
Republicans are only limiting the mortgage deductions past a certain value. They’re not saying if you have two homes in Arkansas you should pay more than if you have one home in Massachusetts.
No, it isn’t.
Is it fair for the government to change the rules if someone recently signed a 30 year note? The deductions may have been part of their decision to buy. What if they can no longer afford the home because of the government changing the rules mid-stream? Should they lose it? Should those with existing mortgages be grandfathered in?
No one thing is equally good for everybody.
(Well, maybe clean air and clean water, except that would destroy the air and water purifier industries. See, I told you).
As one who has paid cash for his last two houses, I think the mortgage interest deduction is terrible for housing. Like artificially low interest rates, it encourage the incurrence of debt and penalizes savers. It also distorts housing prices by creating artificial an incentive to spend more on a house, thus driving up prices.
There will inevitably be a painful adjustment period, and people stuck in overpriced homes will suffer the loss of artificial equity, but ultimately eliminating this deduction will lead to a much more market based housing system and more affordable home prices.
All deductions, exemptions, and credits are bad and wrong. And the rates are too high and too many. There should be only one rate of no more than 10% and it should be from the first dollar of earned income.
It is one of the WORST IDEAS ever - debt should NEVER be subsidized...just don’t talk about killing it or the spear-throwing brigade here will come after you with swords blazing.
What should have been done, decades ago, was a slow phase out, maybe 4% per year. So year one you can deduct 96%, year two 92%, etc. That would give people time to adjust. The other approach would be gradually lowering cap on how much can be deducted. Perhaps beginning with $30k and dropping $3k per year. One other option would be for newly-built homes - homes started after, say 2019 - no deduction at all.
The problem with simply ending it is that property values would crash, and that affects even responsible people (like me), who buy smaller houses than they can afford, and thus are able to quickly pay them off. So eliminating it has to be phased in to not hurt people who paid an inflated price for their home (i.e., bought their home with the assumption that the deduction would always be there), but now have to sell it for what it’s really worth (i.e., no deduction).
We also need to get rid of Fannie Mae and others - who artificially keep mortgage rates low, at risk to the US Treasury (as we learned the hard way 10 years ago)...if people still want to borrow money, they should pay MARKET RATES, not subsidized rates - where they wind up spiking the national debt.
End all write offs for nonprofits, foundations, and other left wing tax scams.
If someone want to give money to a charity let them do it WITHOUT HELP FROM THE GOVERNMENT.
‘Nonprofits and foundations’ are most often (dollar wise) left wing tax scams for the very wealthy. End them.
Economic distortions are bad; the dislocations caused by suddenly ending them are VERY bad.
Any change in mortgage deductibility that affects a lot of people must be tapered. Many people buy on cashflow. If they can’t deduct their mortgage, they can afford 25% (or so) less house. A sudden elimination of that deduction would crash real estate markets and anything that depends on them (banks, pension funds that have invested in MBS, construction, lumber, the list goes on). Tapered changes wouldn’t do that.
If it wasn’t there already, I would say leave it out.
However you would cause countless people financial hardship now and property values would decline if you pull it out from under them. Causing a chain reaction and another possible collapse of ALL business activity like in 2008.
I’d say leave it alone. We are Taxed Enough Already