"According to the National Association of Realtors, who came out with a statement saying they will vote unanimously against this proposal, they say the elimination of the tax breaks or reduction of them for what people get for real estate today will cause real estate prices possibly to decline by as much as 15 percent, knocking about five percentage points off of gross domestic product in this country," Martin said. "There's precedent for that. Under the Tax Reform Act of 1986, there were tax deductions and incentives for real estate that were cut out, and real estate prices dropped as much as 30 percent in some markets."

There seems little doubt that the tax code needs to be streamlined, Martin says, noting that it's now 55,000 pages: "The form 1040 is 75 lines. Over 60 percent of taxpayers use tax pros to help prepare their returns, and spend $1.5 billion a year in doing so.

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