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During a press conference from the Oval Office on Tuesday, Donald Trump doubled down on his commitment to removing taxes on capital gains on home sales.
“We’re thinking about that,” Trump told reporters while hosting Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. at the White House at the start of his three-day visit.
The capital gains tax exemption lets sellers exclude $250,000 in profit ($500,000 for couples) on the sale of a primary residence. But these limits have never been tied to inflation. Since their introduction in 1997, home prices have climbed more than 260% nationally.
While touting the president’s provisions to eliminate taxes on tips and overtime in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a reporter asked Trump about the importance of eliminating taxes on home sales, citing the capital gains tax issues affecting 1 in 3 homeowners in America.
Trump conceded that “lowering the interest rates” would do wonders for the market, taking another dig at the Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.
“If the Fed would lower the rates, we wouldn’t even have to do that,” he said. “But we are thinking about no tax on capital gains on houses.”
He proceeded to call Powell a “numbskull” who has done a “bad job,” before adding, “He’s going to be out pretty soon anyway. In eight months, he’ll be out.” (Powell’s term as Fed chair runs through May 15, 2026, and he has repeatedly said he will not leave the post early.)
This is the second time Trump has acknowledged the hidden tax bill that currently affects nearly 29 million households. The prior week, he told reporters that the idea would be “a very big positive” and “a great incentive for a lot of people that really need money.”
The No Tax on Home Sales Act
Leading the charge on the elimination of the capital gains tax on homes is U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who proposed a bill called the No Tax on Home Sales Act on July 10, which would eliminate the federal capital gains tax on the sale of primary residences.
Following Trump’s comments, the Georgia Republican celebrated his show of support for the bill.
“Thank you, President Trump, for supporting my No Tax on Home Sales Act!” Greene said in a post on X. “You worked for it. You should keep it. Let’s get this bill passed!”
Framed as a pro-homeowner reform, the bill’s goal is to free up housing inventory by eliminating what Greene describes as one of the biggest deterrents to selling: the fear of losing a large portion of your equity profits to the IRS.
“There’s just a lot of problems in the real estate market,” Greene said in an exclusive interview with Realtor.com®.
“This is not for home flippers. This is for people selling their primary residences … and they will get to keep their money, get to keep their equity,” Greene added.
If the provision had kept pace, the cap would now be about $660,000 for individuals and $1.32 million for couples, according to research from the University of Illinois Chicago. Before Greene’s proposal, the National Association of Realtors® had its hopes on the More Homes on the Market Act, a bipartisan bill that would update the capital gains exclusion thresholds for the first time in nearly 30 years.
The legislation proposed to double the exclusion to $500,000 for individuals and $1 million for married couples, freeing up millions of homes by reducing the tax disincentive to sell.