Middle Class Tax Benefits from Housing

The tax benefits of the mortgage interest deduction (MID) are primarily targeted to the middle class. According to 2012 Congressional estimates, 65.4 percent of the tax benefit is collected by households who have economic income of less than $200,000.

Of course, the claims for the MID are going to vary state-to-state given differences in house prices and other costs of living, household incomes, and tax items such as property taxes or state income/sales taxes, which in part determine whether a homeowner claims the standard deduction.

Fortunately, the Internal Revenue Service publishes state-level data of tax statistics. And these state level data, for which the income classifier is equal to adjusted gross income (AGI), illustrate the degree to which MID-benefiting taxpayers are concentrated in the middle class.