Disclaimer: I don't know much about this.
It doesn't have to be cancelled suddenly, it could be removed over a period of 25 years or even more. Similar to what happens with public pensions.
The argument behind this is that the current level of income/taxation can not support people on pension for more than ~12 years on average and as the life expectancy rises the retirement age must rise with it.
There is a fairly big debate happening on 'graduated pensions'. Should a bricklayer who has carried heavy loads all his life be forced to work to the same age as an academic who has spent a large amount of time behind a desk in an office?
The interest rate will go back up at some point and we would have a fairer house market without this tax deduction. It's basically a tax break for people with enough resources to buy their house. And it drives up the housing prices making it harder for first-time buyers.
This could be solved by just cancelling it. People taking advantage of this scheme:
a) had no reasonable expectation that it would be long-term, and,
b) had to be wealthy enough to initially access the scheme to benefit from it, and have since continued to benefit.
Handling any exceptional cases (which would be relatively very few) would be a lot more effective, in every sense, than continuing the scheme.
Besides, the Netherlands already has a Mortgage Guarantee Scheme which protects people with mortgages and changed circumstances.
I would certainly love to be rid of it sooner rather than later, but I do acknowledge that that's going to be disadvantageous to a lot of people, and will have to take them into account as well.
The mortgage guarantee scheme doesn't really apply here, I think: it raises the buying power of people with low incomes, but once you've bought a house, it only means that their bank gets paid if you're forced to sell it - but you'd still be forced to sell it.
I find this argument really strange.
Budgets can (and do) change and cancel categories of benefits for poor people overnight.
But benefits that accrue to wealthy people must not be changed overnight?
This is a function solely of power.
For example, whereas we need to raise the retirement age, we don't suddenly increase it with a couple of years. It is raised slowly in increments, and less for people who are closer to the retirement age and thus have had less time to plan for it.
This can be solved with a grandfather clause.
1) It's the opposite of progressive taxation, since the tax deduction is higher the larger your mortgage is (and there's no deduction if you don't have a mortgage).
2) It artificially inflates housing prices.
Overall, it's a shifting of cash away from those that want to enter the housing market towards those that are in it, i.e. taking from the poor and giving to the rich. The policy seems like an obviously indefensible mistake, yet no political party dears to touch it because the majority of voters are beneficiaries of it, and the topic is slightly too complicated for there to be an informed public debate about it.