Ahead of the September 13 election, the Left has dusted off one of its favourite talking points again: the interest deduction.

In Sweden you can still deduct 30 % of interest expenses (mainly mortgages) up to 100 000 SEK. Above that the rate drops to 21 %. Unsecured loans are no longer deductible at all.

Every year the same story appears in the newspapers: high-income earners use the interest deduction. And every year the Left concludes that the unemployed are somehow subsidising the mortgages of the rich.

Reality looks different. The top 5 % of taxpayers already contribute 26.1 % of total tax revenue.

I’ve written about this logic before when the Left attacked the ROT and RUT deductions – you can read it here: The Eternal Battle: Deductions vs Benefits. The same linguistic game is now being played with the interest deduction.

I’ve said it before: if the Left wants to call these deductions “benefits” or “subsidies”, fine.

Then we should either:

• Call all benefits deductions — and require that you first pay tax to qualify, or
• Call all deductions benefits — and hand out the equivalent amount to users with no requirement to have paid any tax

The second option would suddenly make the “benefit” available to far more people.

Then we might finally see who is really living off other people’s money.

Is the Left deliberately twisting the language, or have they simply convinced themselves that tax reductions and welfare benefits are the same thing?