The US mortgage interest deduction is unusually generous among developed nations.
Evidence
Second, when it comes to subsidies for homeownership, as with the joint return, the United States is already an outlier. Most of our counterparts in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development provide significantly fewer tax benefits for homeowners, and those benefits are often limited to first-time homebuyers, as well as means-tested or capped based on home price. Contrary to the fears of the real estate industry, this doesn’t appear to dissuade people from wanting to buy a home. Canada, for example, has a similar homeownership rate, but it does not allow a tax break for mortgage interest. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 231
Categorization
Category: Factual Claims
- XREF: The OECD-outlier point echoes her same argument about the joint return (marriage penalty) in an earlier chapter.
Related
- The US is international outlier in subsidizing homeowners via tax breaks (similarity 0.93)
- Most mortgage-interest deduction benefits flow to high-income homeowners (similarity 0.82)
- Most OECD countries cap homeowner tax benefits without lowering homeownership rates. (similarity 0.82)
- Seventy-seven percent of mortgage interest deduction benefits go to households earning over $100,000 (similarity 0.81)
- Only 29 percent of US tax filers claim the mortgage interest deduction (similarity 0.80)
- Lawmakers publicly framed the mortgage deduction as the key to homeownership (similarity 0.80)
- The mortgage interest deduction raises home prices and fails to encourage homeownership (similarity 0.80)
- Economists agree the mortgage deduction fails to boost homeownership. (similarity 0.79)
- The mortgage interest deduction benefits mostly high-income households and is shrinking in scope. (similarity 0.79)
- The mortgage interest deduction’s homeownership legend is politically constructed, not empirical. (similarity 0.78)