Why progressives should support eliminating/replacing the mortgage interest deduction.

As Gene Steuerle and his co-authors at the Urban Institute have documented, more than 80 percent of the major tax incentives for housing go to the top 20 percent of Americans ...while less than 5 percent go to the bottom 60 percent. ... The commission proposes to scrap the mortgage-interest deduction and replace it with a "Home Credit" that allows families to reduce their taxes by 15 percent of mortgage interest on borrowing up to $227,000 to $412,000 (the limit is set at 125 percent of the median sales price for each county).

and so on.

November 11, 2005 02:25 AM
Categories: economics - politics
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