I would like to thank the Academy of Left Wing Dunces for this wonderful pronouncement. I wouldn’t have been able to call myself wealthy without their pathetic attempt to find a way to pay for their insipid socialized health care plan.
So I’ve been following the Tea Party objections to the health care reform efforts. They’re worried about the deficit, they just want to be left alone without government interference, and they’re especially angry at the government singling out some privileged groups for special subsidies. They’re proud, self-sufficient patriots and they don’t want handouts.
Kids, have I got a proposal for you.
I’ve discovered a regressive tax break that favors the wealthy and has no good rationalization for its continued use. (According to historians, it was an accident, anyway.) And oddly enough, it costs us about $100 billion annually, or $1 trillion over ten years – exactly the estimated cost of healthcare reform. Really, there’s no other word for it but “pork.”
It’s the mortgage interest deduction.
No, it doesn’t seem like a huge deal. (A lot of the people eligible for it don’t even bother, because you have to itemize your tax return.)
I’m going to spend today and this evening letting my friends and co-workers know that they’re wealthy as well, since one of the first things nearly all of them told me when The Wife and I bought Firebase Blue was how much we were going to love our first ten or so tax returns.
Seriously, just what meds are these people addicted to?
“Hopium”? “Changadryl”?
Everyone I know itemizes – I sure as hell do. I bought my house at the top of the market so my itemized deductions are way higher than the standard deduction. And no, I’m not wealthy by any means. You should see my daily driver…
you only get the write off if you pay taxes and make payments
We paid off the mortgage and don’t have much in the way of deductions anymore. We check each year whether to go one way on Taxes or the other, but it means more to my wife’s peace of mind than gaming the system for deductions. However there used to be ALL KINDS of deductions that got chipped away – used to be you could deduct the interest on a new Car, and a lot more things.
Back when the economy was doing well, before ’89 when we bought this place, I guess Reagan was president.
So, let me see if I understand:
— mortgage interest deduction, which lets ME keep more of MY money: Bad
— $2B program to provide a $4500 subsidy for new car, which I helped fund, but couldn’t use: Good
Gotta admire that grade of industrial-strength illogic.
BTW, anyone who’s eligible to itemize but doesn’t (absent a compelling reason, such as tripping over an exception in the IRS rules) is throwing THEIR money away. Crikey, at least spend the $50 on TurboTax or TaxAct and do some simple analysis…heck, there’s probably personal finance sites out in da Intarwebz that’ll do it for free.
“spend the $50 on TurboTax”
Does that come with the Timothy Geithner exception addon?
EVERYONE with a mortgage itemizes. It’s not like it’s hard.
Obvious display of the mentality of the dependent – they consider anybody that owns their own dwelling “wealthy.”
I know some folks who made decent enough livings and had plenty of opportunities to purchase a house, condo, townhouse, whatever – and never did it. They had the renter mentality their entire lives. Upon retirement, they find themselves paying significant monthly rent, whereas they should be home free. Sometimes they can no longer afford to live in the towns or cities they have spent their entire lives, or have to move into super-cheap apartments. These folks have typically booked over a decade at most of their homes. Think of the colossal amounts of money they wasted, and all the mortgages they paid off for other people.
Well, since the Army moved me and I rent out my house, my mortgage is now a business deduction, not a personal deduction. But I’d like to see any active duty military person who qualifies as ‘wealthy.’
Don’t get me wrong – I’m in favor of getting rid of the mortgage interest deduction, along with the rest of the current tax code, and replacing it with a flat tax. But that’s because it distorts people’s homebuying/renting decisions and complicates the tax code.
And he’d better watch out, because most if the biggest beneficiaries of said deduction are folks in gentry-liberal areas with high real-estate prices, like SF, LA, NYC, and Boston.
“Hopium� “Changadryl�
Ah ha ha ha ha *snort* ha ha ha ha!