Ooh, I feel like rent payments should be pretax or tax deductible and it would help a ton of people out.
Someone tell me why that would be a bad idea, I’m genuinely curious.
Home owners get to write off interest, so us renters should get something.
The real bitch is that I could totally afford a mortgage. I’ve lived in the same place for 11 years without missing a payment on my rent, but because it’s rent it doesn’t count towards my credit score, so fuck me right?
Normally renters should be able to enjoy a low price compared to paying off loans.
But since landlords jacked up the price to be equal or more than how much the loan costs each month, they aren’t getting that benefit.
Actually I think they went and did the math and found that the average mortgage on a house is actually less expensive than rent nowadays. To the point where Banks turning people down because they can’t afford their rent is a complete non sequitur, they still do it, it just doesn’t make any sense that they do it. You know besides greed and keeping the peasants in their place
Homeowners get to write off interest but rarely ever do. You need to exceed the standardized deduction in order for an itemized deduction to save you more money. So unless you are paying more than 20k/year in interest you are not writing anything off and are in the same boat as a non homeowner.
Lots of people exceed the standard deduction. It’s not just home interest that can be written off taxes, and the home interest plus other eligible expenses often exceeds it.
My side job has me working on contracts so I write off enough business expenses to exceed the standard deduction every year. Getting to write off a portion of my rent would be huge.
Why is it a bad idea? Because it’s basically subsidizing landlords. Instead of paying for public infrastructure you’d be helping out landlords to increase the rent, since you know, you have more “disposable” income
I own a home with a mortgage. I’d sell my house to an llc, and rent to myself. The. I’d be able to deduct the profit of the llc from the expenses (the mortgage and upkeep of the home), and then deduct the rent I’m effectively paying to myself from my income.
I mean I’d love for this to happen, but if every home in the country did this, no one would pay taxes, and communities would be underfunded. Goodbye water treatment, police, firemen, teachers. Probably not great for society as a whole.
