Home ownership remains attractive for income tax purposes

Although the schemes that encourage home ownership through income tax have been (slightly) phased out in recent years, home ownership remains fiscally attractive. Martijn Mak (Amsterdam Bureau for Economics) shows this with a time series in ESB.

In recent years, the mortgage interest deduction has been downsized for people with high incomes, but most of the benefit has remained. At the same time, homeowners without mortgage debt only pay 0.035 percent tax on their property tax value.

Home ownership is stimulated through income tax by the mortgage interest deduction and the so-called Wet Hillen. The maximum mortgage interest deduction for higher incomes has been phased out in recent years and the Wet Hillen, which ensured that home ownership could not lead to an additional income tax burden, is also slowly being phased out. However, the effects of this are only visible to a limited extent.