Sounds like a good deal, right? People not being taxed to death on their property by the government.

I’m vehemently anti-tax, but their point is valid. The overall tax rate isn’t relevant in this discussion. The key is that housing is given preferential tax treatment (both income & cap gains) and that creates a massive incentive for people to treat their homes as their primary investment vehicle.

It is and should be an investment, but not your primary one. Once you have a suitable home, your focus should be on diversifying the rest of your wealth, not constantly moving to bigger and better place.

Like I said, though, I’m vehemently anti-tax. The correct answer is to remove the tax breaks that create malinvestment and then reduce the overall tax rates by a corresponding amount.

Well said above.

To suggest that a tax break in any capacity is negative is pure propaganda. Even on the revenue side, it has been shown time and time again that lowering taxes increases revenue to the federal government.

So why wouldn’t we want to let Americans keep more of their money and have viable means to make money for their retirements?

Lending standards, people buying homes they couldn’t afford, and absurd big government programs like the Community Reinvestment Act led to this mess.

If you re-read the article no prominent economist is quoted here. Its all made up liberally biased BS. They tried to make the fact that higher housing sales(the 17% jump) was a “bad” thing. Are you effing serious? And they quoted a no name from the Federal Reserve, a nobody…and they tried to belittle what really made this recession happen, by blaming it on a tax brake. WOW!

If there was an unbiased, non-partisan economist he would unleash Economics 101 on us. Basically, you learn early and often while studying economics that raising taxes HURT an economy, they DO NOT help it.

I cannot beleive how biased that paper is that it would straight lie like that.

See, the problem with our economy isnt Bush’s tax cuts or Clintons elimination of the capital gains tax. It was the gvt telling lendors that they would back loans of people with little or bad credit by co-signing them with OUR tax dollars.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are just as at fault(actually more cuz they are supposed to be overseen by Congress’s financial committee) as all those banks!!!

Big government has caused this problem and its only going to get worse with these bail-out band aids of failing corportae dinosaurs.