Originally posted by sh76
Even so, most mortgages generate interest payments that are higher than $11,400 per year.
With a 5% 30 year fixed rate mortgage, you're paying about $500/mo in interest (at first) for every $100k you take. Assuming an average home price of over $250k (http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/consumerawareness/a/avghomeprice04.htm), and thus a $200k mortgage (a conserv eduction.
Do you have a link to these statistics in terms of how many homeowners itemize?
As stated before, your imagination is limited by your elite viewpoint. Most mortgages are nowhere near $250,000 present home prices notwithstanding.
EDIT: A bit dated but: In 1996, about 27 million tax returns are expected to show a deduction for mortgage interest. That compares to about 64 million home-owning families.Thus, more than half of all homeowners get no tax reduction at all from the mortgage interest deduction.
http://www.ctj.org/hid_ent/part-3/part3-1.htm
EDIT2: It appears both our statements are correct; my statement that most who own a home don't claim the deduction is accurate. But as you said, most who have a mortgage do (though a substantial minority do not):
Nevertheless, the vast majority of mortgage interest is deducted because home-owning taxpayers are much more likely to itemize their deductions than renting taxpayers (63% for home-owning taxpayers vs. 36% for all taxpayers)
http://www.nahb.org/generic.aspx?sectionID=1010&genericContentID=98440
EDIT to EDIT2: From the same source: 32% of all owner-occupied homes have no mortgage
So somewhere in the low 40% of homeowners would have actually used the mortgage deduction in 2005 which is consistent with the 1996 data.