He is tall, lean and blond, with dazzling white teeth, and he looks ever so much like Robert Redford. He rides around town in a chauffeured silver Cadillac with his initials, DJT, on the plates. He dates slinky fashion models, belongs to the most elegant clubs and, at only 30 years of age, estimates that he is worth “more than $200 million.”
Last week the New York Times published a special investigation looking at the Trump family’s real estate empire and the suspect tax schemes that they allegedly employed over the years to preserve, grow, and pass it down.
According to the Times, all of which has been rebuked by a lawyer for the president, Donald Trump received at least $413 million in today’s dollars from the family empire.
I just finished reading the investigation in its entirety. It’s a long one. But if you’re interested, you can do the same here. If you’d prefer the Coles Notes version (Cliff Notes for you Americans), have a scroll through the headlines in this article instead.
In the US you can reduce your taxable income by deducting the mortgage interest you pay toward your principal residence. You can’t do this in Canada, at least not on the property where you live.
However, there are limitations. It is capped at loans up to $500,000 or up to $1M if you’re married and you file jointly. On the other end of the spectrum, you also need a loan big enough such that an itemized deduction will save you more money than the standard deduction.
Not surprisingly, the MID is popular among homeowners. And from a public policy standpoint, one of its selling features is that it’s supposed to stimulate homeownership. But many have argued that it doesn’t actually do this – it unequally benefits people with larger mortgages. (Canada has a higher homeownership rate than the US.)
Right now it looks like you need to buying a home worth at least $305,000 in order for the mortgage interest deduction to make economic sense for you. Again, if your loan isn’t big enough, you’re simply going to opt for the standard deduction.
In 2015, about 22% of all US taxpayers opted to take advantage of the MID. According to Zillow, only about 29% of all homes in the US are valuable enough for the MID to actually make sense. Though in some cities, like San Francisco, it’s pretty much all of the homes. Of course.
Zillow also recently looked at what the recent tax reforms put forward by the Trump Administration would mean for the MID and the real estate market.
One of proposed changes is a doubling of the standard deduction. What this means, based on Zillow’s math, is that you would need to be buying a home worth at least $801,000 today for the MID to make sense. This also means that the deduction would now only benefit about 5% of all homes in the US.
This would seem to only exacerbate the criticism that the MID does not in fact stimulate homeownership in the segment of the market that needs it the most. But perhaps this is the only politically palatable way of removing it – gradually.
Photo by Erol Ahmed on Unsplash
I have largely avoided commenting on politics and Trump on this blog, but at this stage it is almost impossible to do that.
Donations are starting to pile up for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) as the tech community, and many others, begin to respond to Friday’s executive orders. Lyft announced a $1 million contribution to the non-profit group.
Today, venture capitalist Fred Wilson wrote: Make America Hate Again. And yesterday, his business partner Albert Wenger wrote: Misleading the World on Immigration.
At 6 AM this morning, Richard Florida started a tweet storm where he argued that “Trump’s immigration insanity” will fundamentally threaten the core of America’s innovation hegemony.
(He also argued that Canada, and more specifically Toronto, serve to “gain substantially”, as there will no doubt be a doubling down on tolerance to attract the best talent from around the world.)
The Canadian tech community penned an open letter to reinforce the message that, here in Canada, diversity is our strength. This echoes similar messages from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mayor John Tory.
Mass protests have broken out at US airports (links to photos) spanning San Francisco to New York.
And I am seeing folks from Toronto offer up their homes (publicly on Twitter) to anyone who might be stranded at Pearson International Airport as a result of the orders. Many have even tweeted out their phone numbers.
Everywhere I look this weekend I am seeing these sorts of messages. So while I could remain quiet, that doesn’t feel right. And that’s because what is happening is not right.
