NLIHC Submits Comments to House Tax Reform Panel

NLIHC submitted comments to House Ways and Means Committee Real Estate Tax Reform Working Group on April 15, calling for modification of the mortgage interest deduction in order to fund the NHTF. The Real Estate Working Group’s Chairman and Vice Chairman are Representatives Sam Johnson (R-TX) and Bill Pascrell (D-NJ) respectively. The panel is charged with evaluating all aspects of the federal tax code that fall under the umbrella of “real estate.” As part of this process, stakeholders and members of the public were invited to submit comments that will be summarized by the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) and included in a final report that also includes the Real Estate Working Group’s findings. The report will be delivered by the JCT to the full Committee on Ways and Means on May 6.No policy recommendations are expected to be included in the report, which is intended to be part of the groundwork needed to inform potential tax reform efforts this Congress. It remains uncertain if comprehensive tax reform will happen in the 113th Congress, but as recently as the week of April 7, House Committee on Ways and Means Committee Chair Dave Camp (R-MI) and Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus (D-MT) indicated that they intend to work together this Congress to achieve this goal.NLIHC’s comments focus solely on the United for Homes campaign to fund the National Housing Trust Fund with revenue raised through modifications to the mortgage interest deduction. In addition in outlining the details of the proposal and providing supporting data, NLIHC President and CEO Sheila Crowley presented a case for why the time is right to modify the mortgage interest deduction and address the shortage of housing available and affordable for extremely low income households, a number that reached 7.1 million housing units in 2011.Ms. Crowley said, “We readily acknowledge proposing to fund a federal trust fund by raising revenue through reform of a federal tax expenditure is unorthodox. But it is the kind of creative, out-of-the-box thinking that is required in this era of diminishing resources for low income housing programs.”Ms. Crowley also said, “There is bipartisan support for applying savings achieved through a modernization of the mortgage interest deduction to housing programs that serve the very poor,” and noted that the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Bipartisan Housing Commission said in its report, Housing America’s Future, that revenue generated from changes in homeownership tax subsidies should be applied to affordable rental housing programs. Ms. Crowley also included a list of the more than 1,000 endorsers of the United for Homes Campaign in the comments.The committee reports that more than 100 comments have been submitted and there consequently is a delay in the posting of public comments that have been submitted, including NLIHC’s. All comments are expected to be posted on the committee’s website early in the week of April 22.Click here to view NLIHC’s comments. Click here to viewall submitted stakeholder comments.