By Daniel Goldstein | MarketWatch
If death and taxes are the two things you can always count on in life, there probably should be a third: the bucketful of tax breaks Uncle Sam offers every year to encourage more Americans to buy a home.
For one, Americans are able write off virtually all mortgage interest, not only for your primary home, but for a second home as well under some conditions — up to $1.1 million of debt when you include home-equity loans that are used for certain personal expenditures, such as funding college education. In most cases, homeowners are also able to write off their property taxes.