Thanks Gentlemen,

I now understand.

In the Antipodes we do not have such a scheme unless a company owns
the boat. There is no tax relief for mortgages on personal assets,
especially a boat for pleasure use. Nor is there any tax relief on
mortgages for one's own home.

Whilst awaiting at Gibraltar Christmas 2005 for a break in the
Atlantic weather so that I could head head down to the Canaries and
across the Atlantic, I was fortunate enough to spend a lot of time
with a retired university professor from Florida and his wife. I had
always wondered why Americans donated money to their "Alma Mater" when
we would not think of such a thing in our State financed education
system. He explained the system as a mixture of donation and tax
relief and said that it was considered to be a major part of his job
to solicit former students (for donations, of course. I simply cannot
imagine Bruce standing on a street corner with a little white handbag
waiting for former students to walk by). As it was all based upon
revaluing the assets and issuing a receipt based upon the reappraised
value; and, as the donor got to keep the donated boat, RV, work of art
etc until he died, it sounded like a wrought (sp?) to my simple mind
or at least some form of creative accounting.

Rousseau - "All taxation is theft"

On Sun, 25 Feb 2007 18:42:24 GMT, Jere Lull wrote:

In article ,
Peter Hendra wrote:

After reading about Flying Pig and having heard other American
yachtees mention over the years that they bought their yachts on
mortgage, how many cruising yachtees are sailing on a boat they are
paying off?

This concept is generally foreign to most of the other nationality
cruisers I have met. Are there tax breaks or is there another reason
why older people would do this?

In the US, most cruising boats can be considered second (or first)
homes, so can fall under a mortgage agreement, which has substantially
better rates and can have some tax advantage.

We could have financed Xan's initial purchase and substantial (for her)
refit by selling stocks and such, but thought we'd do better by dipping
into a home equity line of credit we kept active 'just in case'.

Personally, given the choice of taking money out of the market or paying
less than 8% on a loan, I'll take the loan. In the 80s, when loan rates
were so abysmal, we paid cash.