property tax

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Residents of Atlantic City, New Jersey, protesting a property tax increase, 2014.

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property tax, levy that is imposed primarily upon land and buildings. In some countries, including the United States, the tax is also imposed on business and farm equipment and inventories. Sometimes the tax extends to automobiles, jewelry, and furniture and even to such intangibles as bonds, mortgages, and shares of stock that represent claims on, or ownership of, tangible wealth. The amount payable is based not on a person’s or a company’s total net wealth but on gross value without regard to debts.

Levies not ordinarily classified as property taxes are those on the transfer of property (by sale, gift, or death), special charges for some public service or improvement (such as special assessments in the United States), certain types of agricultural imposts, and portions of income taxes that apply to presumed or actual yield of farm or urban land.

The scope of the tax in different countries varies greatly, depending upon legal factors, administrative realities, tradition, availability of other sources of revenue, the organization of government (especially at the level of local government, where the income from this levy may be of key significance), and the public services provided. Classification of property by different types has served as a basis for varying the taxpayers’ effective burdens—sometimes by providing for the exclusion of a fraction of the value of some kinds of property (machinery, forests, mines, securities, furniture, etc.), sometimes by adjusting the rates of tax.

In a simple economy in which taxpayers differ very little from each other—for example, a farming community composed of households that are similar in size and income—the amount of property tax assessed on individual households might reflect both the household’s ability to pay and the benefits it receives in the form of public services. The relationship between tax and benefits will not be so direct or apparent in a complex industrial society, however.

In most countries where property taxes are imposed, the revenues they generate are used by local or state rather than national governments. In the United States, property tax receipts account for about half of the revenue raised by local governments. In several countries the property tax applies primarily to urban real property (see real and personal property).

In some countries, property tax revenues can lag behind the growth of national income when the tax assessments fail to reflect changes in the general level of prices. Increased use of computerized systems for appraisal and assessment has recently helped overcome this problem. Property taxes can also be costly to collect; for example, a report of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) showed that, by the early 21st century, property taxes accounted for less than 0.5 percent of all tax revenues in Greece but represented more than 1 percent of the country’s tax administration costs.

One of the most difficult problems in taxing property is determining a reasonable basis of assessment. The problem has grown more difficult as the complexities of economic life have increased. The taxes of the ancient world, of parts of medieval Europe, and of the American colonies were originally land taxes based on area rather than on value. Eventually, the property’s gross output (e.g., annual income) came to serve as the base of taxation. At a later stage, attempts were made to find a measure of what would now be called the property owner’s “ability to pay,” meaning that other forms of wealth and personal property, such as farmhouses, animals, and implements, were included in the assessment. Identifying this type of property effectively for taxation has always been difficult, and the taxation of intangible forms of wealth has proved even harder, especially because intangible property is so easily hidden from tax assessors.

In North America the early New England colonies developed taxes that sought to reach all of the “visible estate,” both real and personal. This “general property tax,” which applied to all property, was on the statute books of some U.S. states by 1800. In fact, during the colonial period, the southern and middle colonies had made relatively little use of property taxation, but, by the middle of the 19th century, property taxes had become the principal source of revenue for all the states. The base of the general property tax was defined to include intangible wealth. Since the value of mortgages and other intangibles consisted largely of claims to rights in real estate and tangible personal property, the result was double taxation. Because the double burden seemed unfair and because concealment was easy, enforcement of the “property” tax on intangibles became problematic. This led to the disintegration of a general tax on all property. Today real estate alone accounts for the bulk of the U.S. property tax base.

The property tax in the United States is the chief source of revenue for local governments. State governments once used the tax as an important source of revenue, but few states now get more than a small percentage of their revenue from this source. Many state governments, however, assess some or all of the operating property of railroads and other utilities. Some authorities favour a state takeover of the property tax, partly because they believe that states would administer it more efficiently and partly in order to remove inequalities in taxing capacity among local governments—especially regarding financing for public schools.

Responsibility for the various phases of administration rests almost entirely upon government officials. Administration involves the discovery or identification of the property to be taxed, its valuation, the application of the appropriate tax rate, and collection. Where the amount of tax is measured by income, the property’s income rather than capital value must be determined. Important aspects, especially valuation, are a matter of judgment rather than of fact. The determination of value for tax purposes is not an incidental result, or an automatic by-product, of a transaction entered into for other purposes, such as a wage payment or a retail sale. While property taxes are sometimes based on reported sales values, these can be manipulated to reduce taxes.

The three principal approaches to the contemporary assessment of property are rental value, capital value, and market value. In European countries the assessment of real property is commonly based on its capital value. The traditional thinking is that capital value can be estimated on the basis of rental values, treating them as earnings on capital. However, most European countries, as well as the United States, endeavour to assess property according to its fair market value. It has been the practice in most Asian countries to base the assessment on the annual rental value of the property. Under the principle of rental value, the tax is based on the average gross rental income the property is expected to generate in normal market conditions. Some Asian countries employ a less-complex but possibly less-fair approach. They simply collect a fixed amount based on a particular unit of land measurement.

Difficult administrative problems arise in determining (1) what actually exists in a physical sense (the location, topography, and area of a piece of land; the size, materials, and condition of buildings; the number and types of machines or items of inventory) and (2) the value of the property. The effective determination of property value requires skilled personnel, access to information of various types (including physical characteristics of the property and realistic market conditions), and appropriate facilities, many of which are difficult to provide at the local government level.

Better administration of the property tax will depend on a number of variables, such as better mapping and improved means of obtaining accurate and up-to-date property descriptions. The situation would also be improved through more sources of data about values and more-sophisticated approaches to valuation. Calculations of value range from the simple to the complex. For some types of properties, such as single-family residences, sales of generally similar properties, known as “comparables,” provide a good basis for valuation. Other properties, such as office and apartment buildings, can be valued on the basis of the income they yield. For unique and highly specialized properties, however—including factory and other buildings that are integral parts of a business operation—the value for tax purposes must rest on estimates of the reproduction cost (the cost to replicate an identical structure) minus depreciation. Business inventories, which can also be subject to a property tax, may be valued on the basis of company records, as may machinery and equipment.

Good assessment requires the skills of a permanent professional staff working full time at pay comparable to that in private industry. Each staff member must be free of political pressure. Such staffs are virtually nonexistent, however. In the United States, for example, assessors have typically been part-time officials, usually elected, poorly paid, and frequently lacking the special training now recognized as essential. Lack of experience has sometimes been compounded by favouritism and corruption—either on the part of the assessor or the local government. Rarely are staffs given the resources to make reasonably current assessments on all properties in the jurisdiction. Yet the pace of change and the amount of new construction are so great as to make many assessments significantly obsolete before a new assessment cycle can correct them. Keeping maps and records up-to-date calls for more continuing work than most governments will support, though contemporary data-processing techniques have helped reduce the burden.

Because the tax base, and hence the amount of tax payable, depend upon an official’s estimate rather than on a free-market test (as with a sales tax) or on the taxpayer’s report (as with an income tax), the taxpayer does not participate in the determination of the assessment. Municipalities usually provide some means to appeal the assessment before it becomes final, but the results of such appeals are often inconsequential. Some taxpayers are unaware of procedure, or they may not consider the possible saving worth the effort of appealing. The appeals process is complicated by the common practice, seen in most countries, of assessing a property at only a fraction of the current market value—even when the governing law specifies that assessment shall be at 100 percent. (These below-market valuations are typically compensated for by higher tax rates.) In these cases, when most properties are assessed at prices below the market value, those property owners who complain that their assessments are unfairly high are unlikely to prevail.

Given the frequency of below-market assessments, nominal tax rates give a misleading impression of the tax burden shouldered by property owners. Formerly, when government functions were limited and the property tax was the sole source of local income, tax rates were determined simply by dividing the figure for estimated expenditure by that for assessed valuation. If spending was to be $400,000 and total assessments in the jurisdiction were $40,000,000, a rate of 1 percent would suffice.

Today officials are more likely to estimate the amount that will be available if the existing tax rate is maintained and then try to judge whether taxpayers will accept higher taxes as a means of funding additional spending. When a strong demand for some particular service appears but officials prefer not to raise their “general fund” rates, a legislative body may vote to mandate a “special” rate. For example, U.S. state governments formerly used the property tax as a flexible element, relying primarily on other taxes. According to whether these were inadequate or in surplus, the state would raise or lower its property tax rate. Many states still have constitutional power to do so.

Rate limitations are common, imposed sometimes by the state constitution but more often by statute. For each class of government in the United States—counties, cities, school districts—a maximum ceiling rate will be set. Sometimes the limit or “cap” may be changed through referendum or by special legislative action. It is difficult to judge whether such limitations have effectively restrained the growth of government spending. One result, however, has been the establishment of special districts with independent taxing power, meaning that they are not subject to tax limitations.

The property tax illustrates the concept of tax incidence—that is, the identification of the parties who ultimately pay for the tax, either directly or indirectly. The tax on land is likely to be capitalized (absorbed in the future profit to be realized from the property) to the extent that it is not offset by benefits of public services. The actual amount a buyer will pay for a piece of property depends upon the net income it is expected to produce in relation to the yields available from other investments. If, for example, the net income from a plot of land is expected to be $1,200 a year indefinitely and if the prevailing yield on long-term assets is 6 percent, then the land will be worth $20,000. If a tax of $300 per year is imposed, then the net yield drops to $900, and the worth of the land falls to $15,000. The tax increase is said to have been capitalized. To the buyer of income-producing land, the tax in effect at the time of purchase will not be a burden thereafter, because the purchase price has already discounted the cost of the annual property tax. Given that land prices generally have gone up over time, it is fair to say that the property tax has not so much lowered land prices as it has served to retard their rise. The same type of analysis is commonly used to determine the effects of increases in property taxes imposed on existing housing and other property.

By comparison, the extent to which taxes on newly constructed houses and nonresidential buildings and other improvements will be borne by the taxpayer—the question of shifting and incidence—will involve a number of different factors. Much depends on whether the tax in question is levied by only one small jurisdiction, such as a county, city, or school district, or by all jurisdictions. If the tax is imposed by all jurisdictions, it is likely to be borne in the short run by owners of capital. If, however, the tax depresses savings, it may result in higher prices or lower wages in the long run (rather than burdening the owners of capital).See taxation.

The analysis of a tax imposed by all jurisdictions is more complex and more relevant for most policy purposes. The construction of buildings depends upon the willingness of investors to make capital available for them, and taxes affect that willingness. A property tax will be treated as a cost of doing business. It must generally be recovered in higher prices from consumers (or in lower prices paid to suppliers or lower wages paid to workers). Firms that do not succeed in passing the tax on to customers will suffer a lower rate of return on invested capital. Companies in competition with others located where rates are lower may be unable to shift the tax fully to consumers. The candidates most likely to bear the burden of the tax are owners of local land, labour that cannot (or will not) move in response to the tax, and especially local consumers. As output and prices adjust to changes in tax rates, the taxes tend to be shifted to consumers. The length of time it takes for a change in a property tax on buildings to be reflected in prices paid by consumers varies from a few months to a number of years. For regulated public utilities, the shifting of a change in tax will usually be more certain, but it requires some time because new rates will have to be authorized by an official agency.

Homeowners cannot shift the taxes on their dwellings. The price paid for the land, of course, will be used to adjust the tax that was in effect when the property was purchased (it is often the case that if the tax had been lower, the price paid for the land would have been higher). The tax on a house closely resembles a tax on other items of consumption, although in the United States it tends to be higher than the taxes levied on most other consumer goods. Deducting the property tax from gross income helps reduce the homeowner’s net burden by lowering the amount paid in individual income taxes.

The relative amounts of property tax borne by persons at different levels of income cannot be determined accurately. There is almost no way to take account adequately of the element represented by capitalized land tax in the price of land. Seen as a tax on all income from capital, the property tax on improvements is almost certainly progressive (placing a relatively larger burden on high-income households). But if one focuses on the burden of the tax levied by a single jurisdiction, the incidence of the tax is likely to fall on local consumers (and perhaps local workers and landowners), making the property tax regressive. The portion of property tax falling on local businesses is presumably shifted to consumers according to their purchases, including those of telephone, electric, and other utility services. Thus, in general, “single jurisdiction” property taxes can be seen as either roughly proportional to income or slightly regressive. One can, however, argue that the total redistributive effect from higher to lower income groups is substantial when considering the degree to which property taxes pay for schools and other services for low-income groups. The portion of property tax falling on businesses is presumably shifted to consumers according to their purchases, including those of telephone, electric, and other utility services.

There is widespread “horizontal inequity” in property taxes because of unequal assessments upon owners. The tax falls more heavily on some kinds of business (e.g., railroads and other utilities) and some types of consumption (e.g., housing) than on others. In the United States, property taxes on farming as a business tend, generally, to be low relative to the value of property but can also be high in relation to the income a farm produces. Because property taxation has such a long history, its many elements have worked themselves into the economy, with some portions being capitalized and others variously adjusted to, and the inequities have to some extent been reduced.

The property tax has been increasingly weakened by a variety of exemptions. In the United States, for example, exemptions apply to about one-third of the land area in the average locality. Most of the land exempted from a property tax comprises streets, schools, parks, and other property of local government, meaning that the application of the property tax to it would merely transfer funds from one government account to another. In some localities, tax-exempt state- or federal-government real estate is important, although these bodies sometimes make payments in lieu of local taxes. Property owned and used for religious, educational, charitable, and some other purposes is generally exempt, and in some countries land with a value below a certain minimum is exempt.

Some exemptions are made in order to attract new businesses or to encourage low-income housing. Some localities grant exemptions for part of the value of a “homestead,” perhaps with a limitation based on the income of the owner-occupant. Many allow some exemption to elderly persons, individuals with disabilities, or to armed-forces veterans. Several authorities also allow income tax credits for residential property taxes.

Property taxation finances local government in the United States—not fully, but enough to make the fiscal independence of local government meaningful. This permits decentralization of government, which may be considered a benefit because it enables citizens to exercise choice over the public services they receive.

The property tax may have substantial nonrevenue effects. Especially when effective tax rates are high, the property tax can lead individuals and businesses to conduct their affairs differently in their efforts to reduce their taxes. A community with high tax rates on buildings will be at a disadvantage in the national (and international) competition for capital unless it can offer compensatory advantages. The supply of capital for the economy as a whole comes from saving. The effect of the property tax on the supply of capital is unclear, but it is likely that factories or various manufacturing and production facilities that require large capital investments will be disinclined to locate in municipalities with high taxes not matched by equally high benefits to business.

The tax on buildings and property other than land distorts resource allocation where older property exists. New, high-quality buildings are taxed more heavily per unit of space than are old ones, including slums. This fails to reflect the costs that the two types of property and their occupants impose on local government in terms of police, fire protection, and so on. Thus, the user’s payment for the services of local government will commonly decrease, relatively, as the building he occupies gets worse, even though public expenses attributable to the property are unchanged or may even increase. Likewise, residents who shift from poorer- to better-quality housing must pay more toward the costs of government, but may not receive correspondingly more in government services.

Some property tax practices work against the long-term well-being of communities. Cities that urgently need to replace obsolete buildings might paradoxically base much of their financing upon a tax that encourages owners to hold on to deteriorated structures and penalizes owners of new ones. Every increase in the property tax rates on structures (not land) reduces the desirability of putting capital funds into new buildings, creates an incentive against upgrading quality by new construction, and discourages maintenance.

Differences in effective tax rates among localities may have the effect of creating islands of relatively low tax rates. Some communities may have tax bases above average in relation to governmental obligations and can get by with lower tax rates. They attract capital. Some communities, perhaps by the use of zoning, exclude types of property associated with high governmental expense, such as high-density housing, which brings many children and requires more schools. Tax rates elsewhere must then be higher. The existence of such enclaves adds to the fiscal imbalance of neighbouring localities and can exacerbate the difficulties faced by older areas.

Lower tax rates on the fringes of an urban area typically encourage suburbanization. Property nearer the centre can often be subject to high tax rates, aggravating the troubles of central-city business properties. High taxes on structures also favour horizontal over vertical growth of metropolitan areas, thereby making a greater impact on the surrounding land.

Where, as in Great Britain, valuation for the property tax rests on income, land held idle or far below its best use will yield little revenue. In such cases, the tax incentive for efficient use is notably lacking.

The rates at which timber is cut and minerals extracted can be influenced materially by property taxation. To prevent uneconomical and premature exhaustion of natural resources, many states have switched from property taxation of mineral resources to “severance taxes” on the production or extraction of resources.

The use of a land tax as the chief source of revenue has often been proposed. It was favoured by the Physiocrats in 18th-century France. Probably the best-known exponent was a 19th-century American, Henry George. His Progress and Poverty (1879) drew upon economic analysis in the tradition of British economists David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill to argue persuasively for a single tax on land and the abolition of other taxes (then predominantly levied on other property). One argument for heavier taxation of land—site-value taxation—is that much of what is paid for the use of land reflects socially created demand and is not a payment to bring land into existence. In this way the community can gain back, through land taxes, some of the value it has created—including that resulting from streets, schools, and other facilities. This, it is maintained, would be a more equitable way of financing local government. Another argument is that the revenue from a tax on land would permit a reduction of taxes on buildings, which tend to deter new construction. A third argument is that higher land taxes would make for more efficient use of land.

There is a great deal to be said in favour of increasing taxes on land and thus lowering land prices. Economically, of course, a “high” price for highly productive land is essential in order to encourage the best employment of it. For example, no rational person would pay the high prices commanded by real estate in Manhattan in order to plant wheat there. The user of land ought to pay the amount of its worth in its best use, but the owner, facing no cost of production, need not receive all that is paid. Thus, some believe that government can reasonably take much of the total paid by the user.

A heavier land tax would change the conditions of ownership. The total collected from users would not change, but private owners of land would retain less, the public treasury getting more. The price system would still allocate land use. Taxes on improvements could then be reduced greatly. The tax relief for deteriorated buildings would be slight, but for those of high quality the reduction could be large in relation to net return on investment. More buildings, new and better ones, would be supplied. Modernization and maintenance of existing buildings would become more profitable.

Over the longer run, landowners would get less of the increments in land values and the public would get more. Socially created values would be channeled into governmental rather than private uses. Taxes could be related more closely to the cost of governmental services.

The opponents of site-value taxation point out that the unearned increment in land value has been capitalized and question the fairness of imposing a heavy tax on present land values for which owners have paid in good faith. They doubt the ability of assessors to make fair-enough appraisals to support much heavier rates on land. They also doubt whether land alone, excluding buildings, would create an adequate tax base.

Dick Netzer, The Property Tax, Land Use, and Land Use Regulation (2003); Henry J. Aaron, Who Pays the Property Tax?: A New View (1975).