Taxpayers can deduct interest on up to $1.1 million in mortgages on two homes: a “main home” where they live most of the time and a second home. The IRS doesn’t require them to say how much interest is for the first or second home, and the agency doesn’t have data on the cost of the boating break.

Not Sympathetic

“I’m not sympathetic for a second-home deduction used largely as leisure,” Quigley said. “If we need revenue and we need to make cuts, I have a hard time putting second homes as a priority.”

Quigley said it “verges on the absurd” that boats have to be “subsidized” at the expense of other things such as food stamps and funding for more police and the military. He’d also like to see the deduction eliminated for RVs, although that isn’t written into his legislation.

Representative Candice Miller, a Michigan Republican with longstanding ties to the boating industry and co-chairman of the 114-member Congressional Boating Caucus, declined an interview request about the merits of the tax break.

“It’s been spun as a deduction that’s taken by wealthy people,” said Nicole Vasilaros, director of regulatory and legal affairs for the National Marine Manufacturers Association. “That’s a political tactic.”

Industry Letter

An industry letter drafted for boat owners to send to lawmakers says the proposal is “wrong-headed and would accomplish nothing except putting American boat builders out of work at a time when the industry is still on its knees and not recovered from the worst downturn since the Great Depression.”

After bottoming out in 2010, the boating industry is recovering. Purchases of powerboats -- which include yachts, pontoons and fishing vessels -- rose 13.8 percent during the third quarter of 2013 compared with the same period a year earlier, according to figures from Statistical Surveys Inc., a research company based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Lake Forest, Illinois-based Brunswick Corp., the leading U.S. boat manufacturer, saw its share price increase 58.3 percent in 2013, compared with a gain of 29.6 percent for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.