On Wednesday, I published a piece arguing that the Republican tax plan would hurt home values by effectively killing off the mortgage interest deduction for middle-class families. A few readers have suggested that might not be such an awful policy move. So I want to elaborate on why it is.
To quickly review, the Republican tax blueprint that Paul Ryan rolled out this past summer calls for simplifying the IRS code by eliminati
ng a number of breaks and nearly doubling the standard deduction to $24,000 for joint filers. Technically, the plan would keep the mortgage interest deduction in place. But with such a high standard deduction, very few people would choose to itemize. That would kill the tax advantage of having a mortgage, leading home prices to fall. People who paid more than $24,000 a year in mortgage interest would still get some benefit from the deduction, meaning that the luxury housing market would be comparatively unaffected.
