A lot of these tax codes have evolved over time and accumulated a lot of handouts from whoever was in power to the people who put them there. The US federal tax code is filled to the brim with all sorts of exceptions inserted by a congressman here, a senator there over decades, either as quid-pro-quos or as politically expedient moves to protect their constituents' interest. A lot of it is couched as 'we are encouraging investment and providing incentives for that'. In many cases, this is true. If Uncle Sam does not want to make calls about where to allocate capital, he encourages private enterprise to make such calls via the tax code. I do not see why this is such a bad thing after all. Of course, this may not make sense for residential real-estate, but overall, it's surprising that people do not realise this simple fact when they complain loudly about how Warren Buffet pays a lower effective tax rate than his secretary --- of course that's by design because Warren Buffet has directed orders of magnitude more capital towards the 'right' ends than his secretary could, in several lifetimes.<p>The whole article reads like a screed against the hyper-rich who 'aren't paying their fair share', but you have to ask, if they are merely taking advantage of (and helping shape) the tax code that incentivizes this behavior, who's really responsible here? Isn't it time we looked at our elected representatives much more critically?