President Donald Trump said Tuesday he’s interested in removing the tax on capital gains from residential property sales as one way to charge up the housing market.
He made his comment during a meeting at the White House with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., as he once again called on Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to lower interest rates.
“If the Fed would lower the rates we wouldn’t have to do that,” Trump said about potentially ending the capital gains tax. “But we are thinking about no tax on capital gains on houses.”
Congress would have to vote to make that change. At least two bills have been introduced this year related to the tax, including one proposed on July 10 by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia). Her bill would remove the exclusion from the tax, which currently applies to the first $250,000 an individual or married couple filing separately makes in profit on a home sale, or the first $500,000 for a married couple filing jointly.
“The capital gains tax on home sales is an outdated, unfair burden — especially in today’s housing market, where values have skyrocketed,” Greene said in a statement.
Greene’s bill would apply to people selling their primary residences, not vacation homes.
Rep. Jimmy Panetta (D-California) filed a bill in February with bipartisan support that would raise the tax exclusion, rather than eliminate it. His proposal is to exclude the first $500,000 in profit from taxation for individuals and $1 million for joint filers.
In a statement about the bill from February, Panetta cited a 2024 report published by property information firm Cotality that said 9% of home sellers the prior year made more than $500,000 in profit on their sale, compared to 1.3% a decade earlier.
Both Greene’s and Panetta’s bills are currently under review in the House Ways and Means Committee.
The "One Big Beautiful Bill" legislation that Trump recently signed into law contains a notable benefit for some homeowners, raising the cap on state and local tax deductions from $10,000 to $40,000 for individuals and married couples filing jointly.