IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/aim/wpaimx/1732.html

The Impact of a Rise in the Real Estate Transfer Taxes on the French Housing Market

Author

Abstract

This paper estimates the effects of an increase in the real estate transfer taxes (RETT) rate from 3.80% to 4.50%, following an optional reform implemented in March 2014 by French départements. Not all the départements implemented the RETT increase, which is the starting point for a natural experiment: using a difference-in-differences design, we estimate two main effects. (1) An anticipation effect a month before the implementation of the reform in order to avoid the RETT increase (timing response). The total tax base increased by 28% just the month before. (2) The classic depressing effect of a tax on the equilibrium quantity (extensive margin response) is estimated to be 7% on average from March 2014 to October 2015. All in all, the average net effect corresponds to a drop of the transactions of 4.6% over a period of ten months following the implementation date. Furthermore, we estimate that the elasticity of the tax revenue to the tax increase is about 0.65, meaning that départements’ tax revenues are still on the increasing side of the Laffer curve.

Suggested Citation

  • Guillaume Bérard & Alain Trannoy, 2017. "The Impact of a Rise in the Real Estate Transfer Taxes on the French Housing Market," AMSE Working Papers 1732, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France.
  • Handle: RePEc:aim:wpaimx:1732
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.amse-aixmarseille.fr/sites/default/files/_dt/2012/wp_2017_-_nr_32.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Konstantin A. Kholodilin, 2025. "The Impact of Governmental Regulations on Housing Market: Findings of a Meta-Study of Empirical Literature," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 2113, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    2. Bev Dahlby & Braeden Larson, 2019. "Should Alberta Adopt a Land Transfer Tax?," SPP Research Papers, The School of Public Policy, University of Calgary, vol. 12(5), February.
    3. Terviö, Marko & Määttänen, Niku, 2017. "Welfare Effects of Housing Transaction Taxes," CEPR Discussion Papers 12551, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Elisabeth Arnold & Katharina Falkner & Margit Schratzenstaller & Franz Sinabell, 2023. "Auswirkungen des Flächenverbrauchs für die Versorgungssicherheit und steuerliche Instrumente zu dessen Eindämmung," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 71122.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • H71 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue
    • R21 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Housing Demand
    • R31 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location - - - Housing Supply and Markets
    • R51 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Regional Government Analysis - - - Finance in Urban and Rural Economies

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aim:wpaimx:1732. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Gregory Cornu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/amseafr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.