mortgage tax break

genchan · #1 (**permalink**) 11-05-2005, 08:42 AM

Is the mortgage tax break a good thing or not in your opinion? Should it be eliminated, decreased (as currently proposed), kept the same or increased? Would you still buy a house if the tax break was eliminated?

cercis · #2 (**permalink**) 11-05-2005, 07:32 PM

It matters not to me. I never quite hit more than the standard deduction anyway (last year it was only about $15 off but a lot of that was donations of items and I decided it wasn't worth being audited for it).

I'd still buy a house. We're buying a house now. It will cost about $20 more than renting each month and that includes insurance (I don't currently have rental insurance).

jhd815 · #3 (**permalink**) 11-06-2005, 08:24 AM

I would definitely miss the tax break. I just bought my house 5 years ago so the majority of my payment is toward the interest and it's nice to be able to deduct that on my taxes.

VJW · #4 (**permalink**) 11-06-2005, 12:13 PM

Only 30% of personal tax returns utilize the mortgage deduction. A whole heck of a lot more people have mortgages, but many don’t have enough deductions to use the long form.

The current tax break allows homeowners to deduct interest on a mortgage up to $1 million and a home equity loan worth up to $100,000. The proposal the administration requested would place a cap at 15% of a $412,000 mortgage.

I think moving from a deduction to a credit would be great, as it would allow many more people to benefit from the tax break, but it has to be throttled back quite a bit more or at least phased out as income rises. Subsidizing home ownership is a great American tradition, but subsidizing homes for the wealthy is ridiculous.

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