>>Geez how many tax deductions do you guys get ?<<
USA home mortgage interest deduction was a significant factor in the housing bubble idiocy. After 1986 there was a strong tax incentive to cut other personal debt and leverage up home mortgage debt via cash-out refinancing, HELOCs, etc...
Prior to the Tax Reform Act of 1986 (TRA86), the interest on all personal loans (including credit card debt) was deductible. TRA86 eliminated that broad deduction, but created the narrower home mortgage interest deduction under the theory that it would encourage home ownership.[16] A New York Times article notes that, in 1913, when interest deductions started, Congress "certainly wasn't thinking of the interest deduction as a stepping-stone to middle-class homeownership, because the tax excluded the first $3,000 (or for married couples, $4,000) of income; less than 1 percent of the population earned more than that;" moreover, during that era, most people who purchased homes paid upfront rather than taking out a mortgage. Rather, the reason for the deduction was that in a nation of small proprietors, it was more difficult to separate business and personal expenses, and so it was simpler to just allow deduction of all interest.[17]
In the United States, there are additional tax incentives for home ownership. For example, taxpayers are allowed an exclusion of up to $250,000 ($500,000 for a married couple filing jointly) of capital gains on the sale of real property if the owner used it as primary residence for two of the five years before the date of sale.
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