Taxation and Home Ownership

Brad Sherman’s article (“For Homeowners, the Flat Tax Doesn’t Add Up,” June 21) unwittingly illustrates the liberals’ muddle-headed policies on both taxation and homeownership. First, local regulation-crazy governments constrict housing supplies with restricted zoning and various “slow-growth” regulations that in reality serve NIMBY interest at the expense of public good. Then, as home prices predictably go through the roof, along comes Sherman and croons: “There, there, poor babies. Let generous Uncle Sam help you out with tax deductions to lower the net payments on your overpriced homes.” Which is sort of like that crazy federal policy that, on the one hand, discourages consumption of tobacco, but on the other hand, pays subsides to tobacco farmers to grow more of it.

If Sherman’s constituents need federal tax subsides to live in their $307,300 median price homes (which means that half of them live in homes that cost more than that), that only tells us that home prices have been driven way too high by our crazy land-use laws and policies, or that those folks are living beyond their means, or both. But either way, subsidizing overpriced homes of affluent suburbanites and thus artificially kiting housing costs for everybody is no way to spend federal tax revenues when the country is in hock to the tune of trillions.

GIDEON KANNER, Burbank