An overview of the taxation of residential property: is it a good idea?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3326/pse.45.2.5Keywords:
property tax, households, housing policies, housing prices, wealth inequalityAbstract
This article examines the taxation of property in the residential market as a potential revenue-raising tool in public finance. Economists generally consider taxing property to be less distortionary than taxing other tax bases. It ranks well in terms of trade-offs across long-term growth and inequality considerations. Although countries have different societal preferences, recourse to property taxation is not generally widespread. Using panel data methods and stochastic frontier analysis, we provide evidence that government revenue from property taxation is relatively inelastic to house price and quantity developments, and that countries with a higher implicit tax rate tend to be more efficient at collecting the revenue. Despite the increase of prices since 2014, low revenues can be the result of low effective tax rates and outdated house valuation systems.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2021 Marta Rodriguez-Vives
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Copyright Notice
Public Sector Economics (PSE) is a an Open Access Journal licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, which permits use and redistribution (commercial and non-commercial), as long as the licensed work is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to PSE as original publisher.
Authors retain the copyright on the papers published in PSE but grant the right of first publication to the journal.
Papers published in PSE can be re-published only exceptionally and in unaltered form, e.g., as a chapter in a volume of an author’s collected papers, or as an unabridged translation for educational purposes. The author(s) must obtain written permission of the publisher and clearly indicate in a first page footnote the reference to the original publication in PSE.
Individual users may access, download, copy and display the papers published in PSE, provided that the authors’ intellectual and moral rights, reputation and integrity are not compromised. It is the obligation of the user to ensure that any reuse complies with the copyright policies of the owners.
If the content of papers published in the PSE is copied, downloaded or otherwise reused for non-commercial research and educational purposes, a link to the appropriate bibliographic citation (authors, title of the paper, PSE volume, year and page numbers) should be provided. Copyright notices and disclaimers must not be deleted.
