Real Estate: Will Mortgage Interest Write-Offs Be Reduced?
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The Congressional Budget Office has come out with a report showing 66 ways to raise money for the federal government. This sounds like dull and boring stuff until you get to Option #7: Reduce the Mortgage Interest Deduction or Replace It with a Tax Credit.
Ugh. You can see where this is going.
“The first alternative would reduce the maximum mortgage eligible for the interest deduction from $1.1 million in 2012 to $500,000 in 2018 by annual decrements of $100,000 each. That change would boost revenues by only $400 million in 2013 but by $41 billion over 10 years. The $500,000 cap would affect more homeowners in later years as incomes increase and housing prices rise.
“The second alternative would replace the deduction with a 15 percent tax credit for interest on mortgages below the declining limits in the first alternative. (In 2005, the President’s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform proposed a variant of that approach.) The change would reduce taxes for some owners and raise them for others, with a net increase of $13 billion in 2013 and $388 billion over the period from 2013 to 2019.”
Here’s an easier way to raise tax revenues: How about taxing overseas profits? How about having hedge fund operators pay income taxes rates and not capital gains rates on their compensation? How about doubling the tax on any company that sends U.S. jobs overseas?
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