Marjoe, I've been thinking. Isn't the interest deduction for our mortgage akin to the earned income credit? I mean the gov is paying us to buy a house, or be a poor worker. So one is a credit for those who are well off enough to have a mortgage, the other is a credit for those who are not. We don't pay that interest to the gov, we pay it to the bank. So who is actually getting that credit?
A credit and a deduction are very different. The deduction means you pay less tax. The credit means (often) that you RECEIVE money you did not pay.
So the fellow paying the bank interest still pays taxes and still pays....only to the bank, as you observe.
The EITC fellow not only does not pay (either the government or the bank) and yet receives money as a REFUND of funds that he did not pay to begin with.
Now I'll be labeled a miisogynistic woman-hater because I used masculine pronouns in my example. For cameo-d and recovering: I am not now, nor have I ever been, a gender-phobe or whatever the current politically correct term for an "idiot" who only uses male pronouns in his/her examples.