Let’s ditch this sop to the rich.

Follow this authorMegan McArdle's opinions

Perhaps these infelicities could be tolerated if they increased the rate of homeownership, benefiting families and their communities. Unfortunately, many studies suggest that the boost to homeownership is marginal at best — unsurprising given that, as mentioned, the tax break mostly benefits people who could afford (somewhat smaller) homes without it. Australia’s 66 percent homeownership rate, which doesn’t have a mortgage interest tax deduction for owner-occupied housing, is almost indistinguishable from America’s 65.6 percent rate.

Whatever tiny benefit it might create is incredibly costly. Thanks to the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which limited the value of the deduction by reducing the maximum qualifying loan value from $1 million to $750,000 for a married couple filing jointly, and by increasing the size of the standard deduction, this regressive subsidy costs the treasury “only” tens of billions of dollars a year. But with the TCJA set to expire next year, more taxpayers will likely be itemizing their deductions, for bigger loans, which will cost the treasury an estimated $100 billion a year by 2030.

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Which is the main reason now is the moment to get rid of the thing once and for all.

According to the Tax Policy Center, in 2017, 31 percent of all taxpayers itemized. By 2020, that figure had fallen to 9 percent. It is obviously easier to take something away from 9 percent of the population than from 31 percent. Moreover, Congress is going to be looking for new revenue sources because, with the TCJA expiring, we’re set for a big legislative fight over the tax code. And gone are the days of zero-percent interest rates when (as congressional staffers kept giddily informing me) deficit spending was literally free.

What’s happening to interest rates is the second reason this is the perfect moment to go after the mortgage interest deduction. Right now, most American homeowners are still sitting on ultralow rates. So while the average interest rate on new mortgages........

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