I can't tell if I'm not making myself clear or if everyone is missing the point.

First off, forget about rent control. I think 2-3% of apartments in NY are rent controlled. Rent stabilization exists for a chunk of housing stock, but it's not as distorting. And not relevant to my point.

The mortgage interest deduction is essentially the same for everyone in every place. And you can deduct no more than 35 cents on every dollar of mortgage interest. If you pay a higher mortgage, you can deduct more...but you can only deduct 35% of it so it's still money out the window. Which means you need to make more to support the debt.

Circling back to the larger point, everyone seems to agree that certain places are more expensive to live in. Which requires making more money. The problem is that the federal government sets brackets that assume that everyone above that bracket is "wealthy", when the costs of living in that particular area can totally negate the elevated salary.

We can argue about the vagaries and costs of living all day -- that's the point, if we can't agree on what's "reasonable", why is it reasonable for the government to impose universal tax brackets on areas with disparate wages and costs-of-living? This does actually make a case for flat taxes...