Word: interested
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...figure out the answer, we might look to an existing one: the mortgage-interest tax deduction. Each year we give up some $80 billion in tax revenues so that homeowners don't have to pay tax on the income spent on mortgage interest. The thing is, about half of homeowners don't claim the deduction; they don't see the benefit, nor do the one-third of people in the U.S. who rent a place to live...
...people who do see a meaningful benefit are, by and large, already rich. Economists James Poterba and Todd Sinai found that the tax savings from the mortgage-interest deduction for households earning more than $250,000 is 10 times the tax savings for households earning $40,000 to $75,000. According to Congress's Joint Committee on Taxation, a little more than half of the savings is seen by just 12% of taxpayers - those with incomes over...
...other interesting bit about the mortgage-interest deduction is that policymakers never intended it to help promote homeownership - something that many people assume to be the case and use to help frame their thinking about the appropriateness of using the tax code to boost home-buying. Rather, the deduction is an artifact of the 1894 federal income-tax code, under which all interest was deductible, since pretty much all interest was a business expense. There weren't really loans to buy houses back then. In other words, a massive and costly cornerstone of American housing policy isn't even something...
...think it is ethical to charge the poor interest and make a profit out of it? -Hasan Iqbal, Sundsvall, Sweden In Bangladesh, Grameen Bank charges the lowest rate among all microcredit programs, and yes, we make a profit. But Grameen Bank is owned by the borrowers, so when we make a profit it goes back to the borrowers as dividends...
...been quietly pushing the Iraqi government to begin a process of national reconciliation to reduce the risk of sectarian violence as the U.S. withdraws its forces. But Maliki's decision to blame Younis for the August bombings and demand Syria extradite him is a sign that he has no interest in negotiating with former Baathists, says Fadil al Roubai, an Iraqi political analyst in Syria. "It's a political accusation to keep Syria from pushing Iraq to engage this wing in the political process," he says. (See pictures of U.S. troops' 6 years in Iraq...