On this one issue, I don’t think it is fair to take away the student loan interest deduction. My son used to owe about $75,000 in student loans (B.S in nursing) and has been paying on this for many years. It’s now about $37,000. Since the lenders are making billions on these loan, some of which people are still paying on at age 60, do you agree borrowers should be able to continues to deduct the interest? He also has a couple of loans at Navient. All in all, they are about $650/mo which cuts substantially into any discretionary income he might have. He has been working as a nurse for about 10 years. It really discourages people to even try to go back to school.
Wasn’t Bernie Sanders advocating “free” college for everyone? Let’s just go with that.
Regardless of current or future tax plans, if he’s paying $650 per month for a $37,000 loan, he either needs to recalculate his loans or he has absolutely terrible credit.
Let’s stick to the point of the OP, which is whether or not the deduction should remain.
My response to the OP is this: why should it remain, other than because it existed previously? Taxable income deductions should exist, if at all, for a specific purpose, usually an attempt to encourage people to do a specific thing by making it more economical. Not sure that we want to foster taking massive student loans.
The OP mentions the amount of money lenders are making; as long as the deduction exists, they will make more such money.
Except the market prices that deduction in, and the end result is that the cost increases. The idea that you can trick the market into discounting something is rather naive, don’t you think?