Political Quotes

“this amendment is actually very simple, and I think it will be another one of the things that we can do to help promote home ownership and the transfer of property to make it less expensive for people and, frankly, to advance a policy that we should have advanced a long time ago. Most people know under current law they can exclude $250,000--for a married couple it is $500,000--from the capital gains when they sell their principal residence. In other words, even though you may make $250,000 on the value of your home when you sell it, that is excluded from the capital gains that would otherwise have to be paid. The problem is, as we found out with the alternative minimum tax, inflation can drive the value of this exclusion down. So what this amendment does, simply, is index the exclusion for inflation. It is very simple. I cannot imagine it would be controversial. What this would do, of course, is to preserve the value of this deduction that we have all taken advantage of for the future and thereby encourage individuals to purchase a new home.”