Not long after U.S. housing prices reached a record high this summer — the median existing home went for $435,000 in June — President Donald Trump said that he was considering a plan to make home sales tax-free.
Supporters of the idea, introduced by U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene as the No Tax on Home Sales Act in July, say it would benefit working families by eliminating all taxes on the sales of family homes.
But most Americans who sell their homes already do so tax-free. And the households that would gain most under Trump’s proposals are those with the most valuable real estate.
As a legal scholar who studies how taxes affect racial and economic inequality, I see this proposal as part of a familiar pattern: measures advertised as relief for ordinary families that mostly benefit the well-off.
MOST HOMES ALREADY SELL TAX-FREE
Right now, according to the Internal Revenue Code, a single person pays no tax on the first $250,0
