Fiscal cliff hits home

From the December issue: With the House and Senate back on Capitol Hill for the lame-duck session, preliminary negotiations aimed at keeping the country from careening off the “fiscal cliff” began in earnest last month. The macro issues — how to reduce federal spending and how to raise federal revenues — are getting the bulk of the attention. But buried away in the discussions are bread-and-butter questions that could affect millions of homeowners and buyers. Will the biggest housing-related tax benefits — for mortgage interest, property taxes and home-sale capital gains exclusions — be on the chopping block in the coming weeks? Or will these popular, multibillion-dollar annual supports for homeownership be deferred for the big game — the “grand bargain” negotiations involving a wholesale transformation of the tax code in 2013? [more]

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