Comment by medvezhenok | Hacker News Reader

Comment by medvezhenok | Hacker News Reader

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I don't think everyone should be forced to buy - I think that the tax code should be changed in order to not favor buying so heavily over renting.

A few ideas to start

1) Get rid of the mortgage interest deduction

2) Tax imputed rent same way that rent payments are taxed (so you would have to pay tax on the money you would have paid to rent from yourself)

3) Get rid of capital gains exemption ($250K per person, 500K for married couples)

or the more extreme version

Land Value Tax.

In Switzerland, 58% of the population are renters. Notably, the tax advantages of owning above are missing in Switzerland, making renting a more attractive proposition. That's what should be fixed. Don't push everyone to buy a home, but don't keep shoveling money in regressive transfers to those who do.

(I didn't even mention prop 13 in California here which locks in your property tax - that is a complete abomination and should never have been passed. It's a regressive giveaway to homeowners)

> In Switzerland, 58% of the population are renters. Notably, the tax advantages of owning above are missing in Switzerland, making renting a more attractive proposition. That's what should be fixed. Don't push everyone to buy a home, but don't keep shoveling money in regressive transfers to those who do.

I don't know how familiar you are with Switzerland, but if you are trying to paint this as a good thing, it is not. Go to www.homegate.ch or www.immobilier.ch and see how much a house costs. Hint: very few are below 1 mio CHF for a family home in a good area. That's an insane amount of money, even for a good earner. People in Switzerland don't rent long-term because its a great financial decision, they rent because they can't afford to buy.

Interest-only mortgages are common here. That means you take out a mortgage and don't even try to pay it back fully, only paying back the interest your whole life and then when you die, the bank sells the house and takes its share of the capital back. There are also some tax rules around (2) from your point above, plus negative interest rates for a long time, leading to Swiss property prices going parabolic the last few decades.

> Get rid of the mortgage interest deduction

Just a useless talking point. Especially with the changes in the tax law, the standard deduction is so high, most people don’t take advantage of the interest tax deduction.

https://smartasset.com/taxes/how-did-the-trump-tax-bill-affe...

> Tax imputed rent same way that rent payments are taxed (so you would have to pay tax on the money you would have paid to rent from yourself)

So now increasing taxes are going to help make houses more affordable?

And if you do that, and want to start treating home ownership as if you are renting from yourself at “market rate”, you are now back to also allowing deductions from ownership as you would if you were a landlord - interest deduction, expenses, deductions for depreciation where you can depreciate the cost of your house over 17 years, etc

> Get rid of capital gains exemption ($250K per person, 500K for married couples)

If you make it more punitive to sell, less people are going to be willing to sell their house when they outgrow it. That makes for less housing to come onto the market.

> That's what should be fixed. Don't push everyone to buy a home

So now you want more landlords?

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