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From: msb@lsuc.UUCP (Mark Brader)
Newsgroups: net.legal,net.taxes
Subject: Re: Abuse of social contracts. (tax system)
Message-ID: <439@lsuc.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 20-Feb-85 19:12:09 EST
Article-I.D.: lsuc.439
Posted: Wed Feb 20 19:12:09 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 20-Feb-85 20:33:56 EST
References: <2748@dartvax.UUCP> <445@ahuta.UUCP> <399@lsuc.UUCP> <110@styx.UUCP> <687@amdcad.UUCP> <1998@sun.uucp> <701@amdcad.UUCP>
Reply-To: msb@lsuc.UUCP (Mark Brader)
Organization: Law Society of Upper Canada, Toronto
Lines: 20
Xref: utcs net.legal:1426 net.taxes:626
Summary: US Mortgage interest deductibility, Canadian RHOSP's

> You obviously don't own a house. The mortgage interest deduction is
> probably even more of a sacred cow than Social Security. (well,
> it is to me!) And I claim there are benefits to society in
> encouraging home ownership....

Interesting point, because we've never had that deduction in Canada.
The short-lived Clark government was going to introduce it in 1980,
in a limited way, but failed to, and the topic seems to have been dropped.
I wonder what other countries do.

Canada encourages home ownership with a tax shelter called an RHOSP,
which is vaguely like the American IRA but you have to spend the money
on housing.  It's a bit halfhearted with various sorts of limits, but
ours probably saved me and my wife about Can$3000 to $4000 over six years
or so before we bought, which is enough to notice.

(For retirement we have RRSP's, more like IRA's and less rulebound than
RHOSP's.  The acronyms stand for Registered * Savings Plan.)

Mark Brader