The Hidden Homeownership Welfare State: An International Long-Term Perspective 
on the Tax Treatment of Homeowners

Kholodilin, Konstantin A.; Kohl, Sebastian; Korzhenevych, Artem; Pfeiffer, Linus

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The Hidden Homeownership Welfare State: An International Long-Term Perspective on the Tax Treatment of Homeowners

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Kohl, Sebastian
Soziologie des Marktes, MPI for the Study of Societies, Max Planck Society;

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https://www.diw.de/de/diw_01.c.824858.de/publikationen/diskussionspapiere/2021_1972/the_hidden_homeownership_welfare_state__an_international_long-term_perspective_on_the_tax_treatment_of_homeowners.html
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https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-000B-53E8-2
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Citation

Kholodilin, K. A., Kohl, S., Korzhenevych, A., & Pfeiffer, L. (2021). The Hidden Homeownership Welfare State: An International Long-Term Perspective on the Tax Treatment of Homeowners. DIW Discussion Papers, 1972.

Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0009-2CDD-E

Abstract

Welfare is traditionally understood through social security decommodifying labor markets orsocial investment policies. In the domain of housing, however, welfare for homeowners is largelyhidden in the tax codes’ fiscal exemptions. Based on a content analysis of legislation, this pa-per introduces a novel yearly database of 37 countries between 1910 and 2020 to uncover the“hidden welfare state” of taxes on imputed rent, deductibility of mortgage payments, housingcapital gains tax and VAT on newly built dwellings. Summary indices of homeownership at-tractiveness and neutrality of the tax code show that fiscal homeownership policies have beenin decline until the 1980s and risen ever since. They are in place where finance is liberally andlabor restrictively regulated. Contrary to the classical welfare state, they are not associatedwith an economic logic of industrialism or left-wing governments, but a rent-regulation alter-native of Common-Law jurisdictions and smaller countries. As welfare for property owners, thelogic of fiscal homeownership welfare diverges from the classical welfare for the laboring classes.