A long time ago, I was against the home mortgage interest deduction.. that is until I heard how some people were using corporations to get around it.

What the mortgage interest deduction does, is harmonizes (makes consistent) the types of deductions that corporations can use, the types of deductions the wealthy were able to use because corps could and the wealthy had good attorneys, vs what the rest of the not so wealthy population.

I would suspect what may happen is the IRS start looking at what a HELOC is used for, and whether the tax deduction on the interest is really ‘legal’ or justified. If equity is withdrawn from a property to improve it, the interest on it is tax deductible. If equity is withdrawn from a property to fund a nice new BMW, the interest covering that HELOC(amount) is not supposed to be tax deductible.

Another item the IRS might consider, is looking at what money is used for when there is a cash-out refi, or a second added to the mortgage.

A lot of the abuses that occurred leading up to the bubble implosion were aided by the equity withdraw interest payments being tax-deductible even though the money was not used to improve the property.

[quote joec]What I’ve always thought was annoying is that for income properties, you could always deduct all your expenses so if they made this across the board cut completely, you’d see all the home owners become renters and … I wouldn’t be surprised if one change leads to a whole bunch of strategies around it…[/quote]
BINGO.. though it is not quite as simple. I believe the real method is to create an investment identity and have the property in that identity rent back to you. Run the identity as a NOL until the property is sold. On the investment entities (like investment clubs) tax treatment is passthrough on income and type of income (LTCG, STCG etc)