Sorry, busdriver. I was responding to dstark, who was urging me to say something more about the list. I’ve gotten in trouble before and I don’t want to get in trouble again, so I didn’t want to take the bait. I wasn’t responding at all to you.
That’s tempting, cf. trying to think of how I can bait you…sounds like you are trying so hard to be good. 
Ah well, not feeling combative enough after this glass of tasty red wine. Be good.
CF, I will just pretend you didn’t say that. 
Of course, the reason why there are so many deductions and credits in the income tax is political (and bipartisan). If a politician wants to subsidize something, putting it in as a tax deduction or credit makes it far more permanent in a political sense than if it were a spending item in the budget. Spending items are easily targeted for cuts as “wasteful government spending”, while removal of tax deductions or credits are criticized as “raising taxes”.
As you are filling in your IRS Form 1040, think of all of the embedded politics in each line.
^^Ugh, so true.
The big ones, in billions of dollars:
Exclusion of employer-paid health insurance premiums: 185 (!!!)
Exclusion of pension contributions, total: 129
Exclusion of net imputed rental income: 72 *** what is this?
Mortgage interest deduction: 69
Capital gains (except resources): 69
Deferral of income from controlled foreign corporations: 63 *** what is this?
Accelerated depreciation of machinery and equipment: 48
Deductibility of state, local taxes (not owner-occupied homes): 44
Charitable deductions: 39
Exclusion of Social Security benefits, total: 38
Capital gains exclusion on home sales: 34
Property tax deduction: 29
Exclusion of interest on public bonds: 28
Treatment of qualified dividends: 24
Step-up basis of capital gains at death: 23
Child credit: 23
CF, The explanations of the costs are listed at the end of the link in the original post.
Net imputed rental income is a phony number. A homeowner owns his place. If he rented his place to himself, what would the rent be? That would be income. That income isn’t taxed. Tax the phantom rent.
Because that income isn’t taxed, the federal govt is getting 72 billion less in taxes. Like I said… A bs number.
Number 62 towards the end of the link has a more accurate description. 
That’s a weird one. If they were to tax the phantom rent, wouldn’t we then be able to deduct all the costs of home ownership?
Hit on one of my pet peeves. These are not “costs”. They are estimates dug up of what tax revenue “could be had” if we were to tax everything so that Congress can bargain to cut or tax something else in its stead. There is no “tax every dollar” amount and there never was. And if there were, it would not include wealth taxes or mark to market on unrealized gains taxes, or “imputed rent” anyway, other than for certain corporations. This is all silly political theater. The truth is that they collect enough revenue. That is not really the problem. Their addiction to MORE is the problem.
And please, stop saying ppl shelter their $ in corporations. Corporations pay a 35% tax rate even on capital gains, as there is no preferred rate for them. They generally pay tax on accrued income, whether received to not. Some even pay on unrealized gain (MTM). When the $ does come out as dividends to a shareholder, it is taxed yet again. Any increase in net market value of the corporation is taxed again when stock is sold. I’m not sure what they are sheltering. Their capital is still at work is all. If it draws income, it is taxed. If they withdraw their capital, it is taxed.
If you want a wealth tax, or for rich ppl to pay their “fair share”, call it what it is: income redistribution. What ppl are really saying is that some ppl just make far too much $. I don’t disagree. But call it what it is.
Actually, a wealth tax sounds pretty bad to me. So calling a wealth tax a wealth tax…
I wonder how many of those numbers are phony numbers. In what universe do they think they could get taxes from homeowners renting to themselves? Maybe they should put in things like a breath tax, think of how much they could be collecting every time someone takes a breath. Huge costs, just by not collecting on that one.
Florida used to have an “intangible property tax” on some kinds of investments like stocks, bond, mutual funds (but not Florida state and local government bonds or mutual funds made of them). It was repealed in 2007.
Floridians would rather bleed the tourists. 
That FL intangibles tax was genius though. It cost FL nothing bc the banks and brokers had to collect and hand over the return and taxes of their clients!! Money for nothing…
The Florida tax was very low… And I still hated the tax.
@“Cardinal Fang”
The deferral of income from controlled foreign corporations is the amount that a US corporation’s nonUS subsidiary has not yet dividended up to it yet. The nonUS sub is not subject to US tax on its nonUS income unless or until it pays a dividend to the US parent (or lends it the $). This amount is what us referred to as “trapped cash”. Companies don’t want to bring their nonUS $ back to the US or it will be taxed.
Most countries never tax the income that a foreign sub makes outside that country, and presume it has already been taxed there. It is the difference between worldwide income tax and territorial tax regimes.
All this nonsense about companies reincorporating outside the US? It is really just making sure the parent of all the nonUS companies in the new company group is NOT a US company so that they don’t have to deal with the issue. If the US would adopt a territorial regime (as every country but one other has), then the US would be on a level playing field as a place of business for big multinationals!!