Why can’t you salary sacrifice your mortgage payments?

14 comments

1. SS cars is mainly to push for government goals of pushing for economical cars such as electric.

   There’s no government gain by giving you untaxed mortgage payments.

2. You already get relief from Capital gains on your property.

   I have a sneaking suspicion there used to be a tax relief on mortgage from residential properties a long time ago.

   Frankly I’d say SS is a pretty questionable benefit for “rich people” maybe outside of pensions.

3. It would push house prices even higher and effectively subsidises banks.

4. If they lost the amount they were getting in tax from doing that, they’d either have to raise another tax or make a lot of cuts.

5. We used to have MIRAS (mortgage interest relief at source) where you could offset mortgage interest against your tax.

   It was started around 40 years ago by Thatcher and co and went on until around 2000 I believe.

6. There’s not that many things you can salary sacrifice these days. The government started clamping down on it as people were sacrificing salary for all sorts of stuff.

7. Salary Sacrifice is to push a government agenda, so mortgages wouldn’t likely be approved.

   For me, the largest Andy most obvious salary sacrifice scheme that’s missing, and that would help government objectives is associated to solar and battery installation in homes.

   I would totally be an over that!

8. Same reason you can’t with rent.

9. Awful idea. It was awful when there was tax relief on mortgage interest.

10. They are totally different.

    SS for pensions / car / healthcare are for benefits provided by your employer, conditional on that employment and at the employers discretion. When you salary sacrifice you normally still pay tax on the benefit (not pension).

    A mortgage has nothing to do with your job. It is a personal loan provided by a business.

11. Stuff has to be paid for.

    It’s really that simple.

    Everyone wants the government to provide incredible services (won’t somebody please think of the NHS), but nobody wants to pay taxes.

    If you make mortgage payments tax free, how are you going to make up the money lost?

    The car thing is seeking to achieve a specific goal (get the market for electric cars going). What specific goal would you address by making mortgage payments tax exempt? Higher house prices?

12. Interest on your mortgage was tax-deductible until 2001. I don’t know what the rationale was for changing it. I’d say blame the man in charge of the country at the time but the bot says that’s verboten

13. Even as a homeowner I feel this would unfairly help the better off while not helping the lower paid and non-home-owners.

14. How would that work if you moved jobs?