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Tax Treatment of Owner Occupied Housing and Wealth Inequality

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  • Sang-Wook Stanley Cho

    (University of New South Wales, School of Economics)

  • Johanna Francis

    (Fordham University, Department of Economics)

Abstract

In the U.S., mortgage interest deductibility provides a financial incentive for home ownership over renting as well as an incentive to "over-consume" housing since houses are not fungible. Home-ownership is also often promoted as a safe means of wealth creation. We construct and calibrate a quantitative general equilibrium lifecycle model with homeownership and mortgage decisions to investigate the degree to which the wealth inequality in the United States is driven by the home mortgage interest deduction and the untaxed nature of imputed rents from owner-occupied housing. As the tax treatment of housing will disproportionately create tax savings for the top deciles of the income distribution, we quantify how the tax deductibility contributes to the heavily skewed distribution of wealth in the United States using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances. Although the tax treatment of owner occupied housing alone is unlikely to produce the extreme wealth concentration at the far right tail of the distribution, we argue that it is re-enforced by a bequest motive. We find that removing mortgage interest deductibility and taxing imputed rents reduces the Gini coefficient by 0.04 points, caused by a re-allocation of wealth from the top 10 percentiles to the bottom 50 percentiles of the wealth distribution.

Suggested Citation

  • Sang-Wook Stanley Cho & Johanna Francis, 2008. "Tax Treatment of Owner Occupied Housing and Wealth Inequality," Fordham Economics Discussion Paper Series dp2008-17, Fordham University, Department of Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:frd:wpaper:dp2008-17
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    Cited by:

    1. George R. Zodrow, 2019. "Intrajurisdictional Capitalization and the Incidence of the Property Tax," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: George R Zodrow (ed.), TAXATION IN THEORY AND PRACTICE Selected Essays of George R. Zodrow, chapter 16, pages 489-522, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    2. Hamed Ghiaie & Jean‐François Rouillard, 2022. "Housing tax expenditures and financial intermediation," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 55(2), pages 937-970, May.
    3. Moore, Rachel & Pecoraro, Brandon, 2019. "Modeling the Internal Revenue Code in a heterogeneous-agent framework: An application to TCJA," MPRA Paper 93110, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Leo Kaas & Georgi Kocharkov & Edgar Preugschat & Nawid Siassi, 2021. "Low Homeownership in Germany—a Quantitative Exploration," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 19(1), pages 128-164.
    5. Yi Wu & Yunong Li, 2018. "Impact of government intervention in the housing market: evidence from the housing purchase restriction policy in China," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(6), pages 691-705, February.
    6. Moore, Rachel & Pecoraro, Brandon, 2021. "Quantitative Analysis of a Wealth Tax in the United States: Exclusions, Evasion, and Expenditures," MPRA Paper 109120, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Moore, Rachel & Pecoraro, Brandon, 2023. "Quantitative analysis of a wealth tax for the United States: Exclusions and expenditures," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    8. Moore, Rachel & Pecoraro, Brandon, 2020. "Macroeconomic implications of modeling the Internal Revenue Code in a heterogeneous-agent framework," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 72-91.
    9. Markus Karlman & Karin Kinnerud & Kasper Kragh-Sorensen, 2021. "Costly reversals of bad policies: the case of the mortgage interest deduction," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 40, pages 85-107, April.
    10. Zhou, Zhengyi, 2018. "Housing market sentiment and intervention effectiveness: Evidence from China," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 91-110.
    11. Salvador Barrios & Cecile Denis & Viginta Ivaskaite-Tamosiune & Adriana Reut & Estefania Vazquez Torres, 2019. "Housing taxation: a new database for Europe," JRC Working Papers on Taxation & Structural Reforms 2019-08, Joint Research Centre (Seville site).
    12. Agarwal, Sumit & Li, Keyang & Qin, Yu & Wu, Jing & Yan, Jubo, 2020. "Tax evasion, capital gains taxes, and the housing market," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 188(C).
    13. Bettina Bruggemann & Zachary L. Mahone, 2023. "Entrepreneurial Rates of Return and Wealth Inequality," Department of Economics Working Papers 2023-03, McMaster University.
    14. Floetotto, Max & Kirker, Michael & Stroebel, Johannes, 2016. "Government intervention in the housing market: Who wins, who loses?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 106-123.
    15. Rachel Moore & Brandon Pecoraro, 2021. "A Tale of Two Bases: Progressive Taxation of Capital and Labor Income," Public Finance Review, , vol. 49(3), pages 335-391, May.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Mortgage interest deductibility; housing; wealth; inequality;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth

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