Some tax analysts predict President Clinton's proposal to exempt the first $500,000 in gains from a home sale from taxation won't do much for middle-class Americans, since they already have a $125,000 exemption. Although they knew not to expect it, advocates of broad cuts in capital gains tax rates were still disappointed at the President's narrow approach.

• Tax specialists make the point that Clinton's plan targets a narrow band of people in the upper middle-class.

• Unlike a reduction in tax rates on capital gains from securities it would do next to nothing to boost the economy.

• Stephen Entin, of the Institute for Research on the Economics of Taxation points out that housing already gets more favorable tax treatment than other assets.

• And an increase in the housing exemption would reduce federal revenues by about $1.5 billion over six years.

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has said that the capital gains tax is not "a useful means of raising revenue or a means, for that matter, of doing anything else of a constructive nature."

Source: Editorial, "The Capital Gains Tax Cut That Isn't," Investor's Business Daily, February 7, 1997.