re: Should mortgage interest be tax deductible?

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If I pay less in income taxes because of the mortgage interest deduction, I am paying for other people’s housing?

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No, other people without mortgages are paying for yours.

Do you support the government using the tax code to influence behavior?

no, should just be simple flat tax

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Salt limits deductions on property to just over 40k.

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So what?

I'm talking about federal income taxes, not state and local taxes.

And yes, they benefit anyone/everyone who owns a property, but simple math means that people who have more expensive properties benefit more.

And yes, I am well aware that the government manipulates the tax code to engineer behavior, cheerfully picking winners and losers along the way. Which is one big reason why we ought to ditch the current model and go to some kind of consumption tax.

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Trump just announced he was going to make interest payments on car loans deductible.

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Sounds great.

"Problem" is that the standard deduction is so large very few wxceed it by itemizing

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before 1986 it was all interest was deductible

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Some high earners also paid top marginal rates as high as 70% before some of the Reagan tax cuts.

So the way you mitigated your taxes back then was to spend like a drunken sailor as long as the purchases, expenses, or fees (Interest) were tax dedicible. Of course interest back then on a home or car was something like 20%, but most homes were under 100k and a car under 10k. Just think of the all the forms and documents to file back then before the advent of computers to file your taxes and figure which item falls under which line as a deduction.

Some of that still survives today. Businesses and wealthy individuals mitigate their taxes by finding deductions and contributions to reduce their adjusted gross income as low as possible so their effective tax rate is much less than an individual stuck paying in the top bracket without any deductions.

That is how you get secretaries that pay more as a percentage of income than a CEO of a company.

No. Nothing should be tax deductible.

Because we should have a flat tax that everyone pays with no deductions of charitable contributions

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We should let the market sort it out without government provocation

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Ok, great, now do electric cars.

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We should let the market sort it out without government provocation

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"Provocation" is odd terminology for lack of taxation. Capitol gains or progressive taxation similarly in involve treatment differentials within the tax code. Are those "provocations" as well?

As someone who’s owned multiple homes, yes, it’s awesome!

But no, it’s just a gov handout that drives up the pricing of housing, doesn’t actually encourage buying. And tax payers pay for the increase for no good reason.

Not really a left or right thing, it’s an economics thing.

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In most cases with larger standard deduction it's not deductible

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I can't remember when we went to standard deduction. Our house has been paid off for probably 10 years and we changed accountants when the one we used for years passed away unexpectedly. We just don't have enough deductions but I don't think it ever was a deciding factor in our buying a home. But, I'm fine with mortgage interest being tax deductible.