Don’t shift tax burden to the elderly

The proposed tax plan presented by the current administration is quite interesting.

Remember when you were young and raising a family? One of your biggest monthly costs was the mortgage payment. As you got older, with great pride, you paid off the mortgage and felt a little more financially secure and then it happened, the medical bills started getting larger, eyesight needed prescription glasses, ears needed hearing aids and the cost of prescription drugs just kept going up.

It is this travel through time that makes the proposed tax plan so interesting.

The proposal is to allow deductions for home mortgage interest, but not allow deductions for medical-related costs. To put this in perspective, the apparent aim is to shift the burden of the cost of government from the younger taxpayers to older taxpayers.

For some reason, this just does not seem fair, maybe because I am in the older category.

It would appear to me that if fairness is to be considered, then go ahead and double the standard deduction, as is proposed, but allow other deductions above certain stated minimums.

For example, for medical expenses, change the deductible from 7.5 percent to 15 percent and allow that amount to be a deduction. Use the same concept for other recognized deductions, as this would allow the younger generation to keep their home mortgage deductions and allow the older generation the deductions that are most related to their cost of continued living.

This story was originally published May 19, 2017 at 4:19 PM with the headline "Don’t shift tax burden to the elderly."