Working Paper - 75 Years of Research on the Property Tax

The primary topics covered are property tax relief in the form of property tax limitations, property tax administration with a focus on assessment practices and assessment inequities, and – the topic that receives the most attention – the critical and longstanding debate on whether the incidence of the property tax is best described by the “capital tax view” or the “benefit tax view.” Keywords: pr. [...] As shown in Figure 1, there was a surge of interest in the property tax in the period from the early 1960s to the early 1990s (over 100 articles in the 30 years from 1963 to 1992), a period that coincided with the development of the “new view” of the incidence of the tax by Peter Mieszkowski (1972) and widespread interest in property tax limitations sparked by the passage in 1978 of Proposition 13. [...] In what follows, I shall discuss the evolution of thought on several of these topics – with a special focus on the critical and longstanding issue of the incidence of the tax – emphasizing the contributions of key articles that have appeared in the NTJ, which are shown in bold face the first time they are mentioned in the text. [...] Such an approach provides information on the accuracy of the assessment model in the year of assessment, but does not accurately reflect the relationship between the sales price and actual taxes paid based on the assessed value in the year of sale – the appropriate measure for assessing the fairness of a property tax system. [...] What is the Incidence of the Property Tax in Central Cities? The Oates and Fischel 70-80 percent figure for the percentage of the population for which the benefit tax applies includes the residents of central cities.