Most mortgage-interest deduction benefits flow to high-income homeowners

Evidence

A taxpayer can only reap these benefits by choosing to itemize deductions that, when combined, are greater than the standard deduction, which isn’t the case for most people: A recent analysis of IRS statistics showed that only 22 percent of tax returns claimed deductions related to home mortgage interest. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities produced a report showing that 77 percent of the benefits of the mortgage interest deduction went to homeowners with incomes higher than $100,000, while almost half of homeowners with mortgages, who are mostly middleand lower-income earners, did not receive any tax benefit. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 183

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• XREF: Mirrors the ‘On Sacrifice’ insight that nominally universal institutions deliver benefits only to the already-privileged.

Related

• Seventy-seven percent of mortgage interest deduction benefits go to households earning over $100,000 (similarity 0.95)
• The mortgage interest deduction benefits mostly high-income households and is shrinking in scope. (similarity 0.92)
• Only a small minority of taxpayers can actually benefit from the mortgage deduction (similarity 0.89)
• Only 29 percent of US tax filers claim the mortgage interest deduction (similarity 0.89)
• Subprime targeting explains why high-income Black families claim larger mortgage deductions (similarity 0.84)
• The 1986 Tax Reform Act made mortgage interest the main deductible personal interest (similarity 0.83)
• Lawmakers publicly framed the mortgage deduction as the key to homeownership (similarity 0.82)
• The 1986 tax reform singled out mortgage interest for privileged deduction (similarity 0.82)
• The US mortgage interest deduction is unusually generous among developed nations. (similarity 0.82)
• The mortgage interest deduction rarely influences the decision to buy a home. (similarity 0.81)
• The mortgage interest deduction raises home prices and fails to encourage homeownership (similarity 0.81)
• Economists agree the mortgage deduction fails to boost homeownership. (similarity 0.81)
• Subprime targeting simultaneously shrinks black home equity and their mortgage interest deductions (similarity 0.80)
• The 2017 tax act quietly curtailed the mortgage interest deduction. (similarity 0.80)
• The mortgage interest deduction’s homeownership legend is politically constructed, not empirical. (similarity 0.80)