Who cares about mortgage interest deductibility?
Who cares about mortgage interest deductibility?
We use the US Survey of Consumer Finances to measure the change in federal tax liability that would result should mortgage interest no longer be deductible from taxable income. We argue that the elimination of this housing tax provision would lead households to reshuffle their balance sheet, thereby lowering the amount of interest income taxes collected. We find that the cost of this tax provision is between 36 and 66 percent of the estimates produced by the US Office of Management and Budget, depending on the types of assets one assumes would be used to lower mortgage debt following the removal of the provision. Furthermore, since mostly rich households would be in a position to reshuffle their balance sheet following such a change in tax policy, the distributional effects of this program are much smaller than conventionally believed. While the focus of this paper is on the elimination of mortage interest deductibility in the US, the results of this study shed some light on the impact and distributional consequences to expect should mortgage interest deductibility be introduced in Canada.
mortgage interest deductibility, housing, taxation, redistribution
1-23
Gervais, Martin
c03b188f-08e2-42a6-abca-b64b362a4065
Pandey, Manish
f6c71dd4-f9ef-42e0-adb7-bd73b7cb96d9
March 2008
Gervais, Martin
c03b188f-08e2-42a6-abca-b64b362a4065
Pandey, Manish
f6c71dd4-f9ef-42e0-adb7-bd73b7cb96d9
Gervais, Martin and Pandey, Manish
(2008)
Who cares about mortgage interest deductibility?
Canadian Public Policy, 34 (1), .
(doi:10.3138/cpp.34.1.001).
Abstract
We use the US Survey of Consumer Finances to measure the change in federal tax liability that would result should mortgage interest no longer be deductible from taxable income. We argue that the elimination of this housing tax provision would lead households to reshuffle their balance sheet, thereby lowering the amount of interest income taxes collected. We find that the cost of this tax provision is between 36 and 66 percent of the estimates produced by the US Office of Management and Budget, depending on the types of assets one assumes would be used to lower mortgage debt following the removal of the provision. Furthermore, since mostly rich households would be in a position to reshuffle their balance sheet following such a change in tax policy, the distributional effects of this program are much smaller than conventionally believed. While the focus of this paper is on the elimination of mortage interest deductibility in the US, the results of this study shed some light on the impact and distributional consequences to expect should mortgage interest deductibility be introduced in Canada.
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gervais_pandey_cpp_2008.pdf
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Published date: March 2008
Keywords:
mortgage interest deductibility, housing, taxation, redistribution
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Local EPrints ID: 155903
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/155903
PURE UUID: d6139d97-c1eb-4dc3-9185-3d116f0dfbcd
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Date deposited: 01 Jun 2010 10:22
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 01:41
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Author:
Martin Gervais
Author:
Manish Pandey
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