IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/1080.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A General Equilibrium Simulation Study of Subsidies to Municipal Expenditures

Author

Listed:
  • Roger H. Gordon
  • Joel Slemrod

Abstract

In the United States, local government expenditures are heavily subsidized through a variety of sources. This paper explores theoretically and then simulates empirically the effects of eliminating either of two federal subsidies encouraging local government expenditures: (1) income tax deductibility of local tax payments, and (2) the tax exempt status of interest on municipal bonds.We find that eliminating the deductibility of local taxes raises the utility of all income groups, and of home owners as well as of renters.Making interest on municipal bonds taxable, however, substantially hurts the very rich, who lose a tax shelter, and may hurt the very poor, who pay more for municipal services. While most people gain, the net gain is very small.

Suggested Citation

  • Roger H. Gordon & Joel Slemrod, 1983. "A General Equilibrium Simulation Study of Subsidies to Municipal Expenditures," NBER Working Papers 1080, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:1080
    Note: PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w1080.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. McGuire, Martin, 1974. "Group Segregation and Optimal Jurisdictions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(1), pages 112-132, Jan.-Feb..
    2. Hamilton, Bruce W, 1976. "Capitalization of Intrajurisdictional Differences in Local Tax Prices," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 66(5), pages 743-753, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. James M. Poterba & Arturo Ramirez Verdugo, 2008. "Portfolio Substitution and the Revenue Cost of Exempting State and Local Government Interest Payments from Federal Income Tax," NBER Working Papers 14439, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Fullerton, Don & Metcalf, Gilbert E., 2002. "Tax incidence," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 26, pages 1787-1872, Elsevier.
    3. Poterba, James M. & Verdugo, Arturo Ramírez, 2011. "Portfolio Substitution and the Revenue Cost of the Federal Income Tax Exemption for State and Local Government Bonds," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 64(2), pages 591-613, June.
    4. James M. Poterba, 1984. "Expected Future Tax Policy and Tax Exempt Bond Yields," Working papers 350, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Economics.
    5. Berkovec, James & Fullerton, Don, 1992. "A General Equilibrium Model of Housing, Taxes, and Portfolio Choice," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(2), pages 390-429, April.
    6. Berkovec, James & Fullerton, Don, 1989. "The General Equilibrium Effects of Inflation on Housing Consumption and Investment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(2), pages 277-282, May.
    7. Fortune, Peter, 1998. "Tax-exempt Bonds Really Do Subsidize Municipal Capital!," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 51(n. 1), pages 43-54, March.
    8. Bruno Sultanum & Zachary Bethune, 2016. "Decentralized Trade with Private Values," 2016 Meeting Papers 1630, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    9. Thomas Luke Spreen & Ed Gerrish, 2022. "Taxes and tax‐exempt bonds: A literature review," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(4), pages 767-808, September.
    10. Fortune, Peter, 1998. "Tax-Exempt Bonds Really Do Subsidize Municipal Capital!," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 51(1), pages 43-54, March.
    11. Charles R. Hulten & Robert M. Schwab, 1988. "Income Originating in the State and Local Sector," NBER Chapters, in: Fiscal Federalism: Quantitative Studies, pages 215-254, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Roger H. Gordon & Joel B. Slemrod, 1986. "An Empirical Examination of Municipal Financial Policy," NBER Chapters, in: Studies in State and Local Public Finance, pages 53-82, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Joel Slemrod, 1985. "The Impact of Tax Reform on Households," NBER Working Papers 1765, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Roger Gordon & Laura Kalambokidis & Joel Slemrod, 2003. "A New Summary Measure of the Effective Tax Rate on Investment," NBER Working Papers 9535, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Joel Slemrod, 1984. "A General Equilibrium Model of Taxation That Uses Micro-Unit Data: Withan Application to the Impact of Instituting a Flat-Rate Income Tax," NBER Working Papers 1461, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Peter Fortune, 1995. "Debt capacity, tax exemption, and the municipal cost of capital: a reassessment of the new view," Working Papers 95-8, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    17. Joel B. Slemrod, 1985. "The effect of tax simplification on individuals," Conference Series ; [Proceedings], Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, vol. 29, pages 64-102.
    18. Charles R. Hulten & Robert M. Schwab, 1987. "Income Originating in the State and Local Sector," NBER Working Papers 2314, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Don Fullerton, 1983. "Which Effective Tax Rate?," NBER Working Papers 1123, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Don Fullerton & Roger H. Gordon, 1983. "A Reexamination of Tax Distortions in General Equilibrium Models," NBER Chapters, in: Behavioral Simulation Methods in Tax Policy Analysis, pages 369-426, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Allen C. Goodman & Miron Stano, 2000. "Hmos and Health Externalities: A Local Public Good Perspective," Public Finance Review, , vol. 28(3), pages 247-269, May.
    4. George R. Zodrow, 2019. "Intrajurisdictional Capitalization and the Incidence of the Property Tax," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: George R Zodrow (ed.), TAXATION IN THEORY AND PRACTICE Selected Essays of George R. Zodrow, chapter 16, pages 489-522, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    5. Sung Hoon Kang & Mark Skidmore & Laura Reese, 2015. "The Effects of Changes in Property Tax Rates and School Spending on Residential and Business Property Value Growth," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 43(2), pages 300-333, June.
    6. Christian A. L. Hilber, 2017. "The Economic Implications of House Price Capitalization: A Synthesis," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 45(2), pages 301-339, April.
    7. Melle Marco C., 2014. "Eine europäische Bemessungsgrundlage für die Körperschaftsteuer? Konzeption und ordnungsökonomische Analyse / Conceptual design and constitutional economics analysis of a European tax base for corpora," ORDO. Jahrbuch für die Ordnung von Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, De Gruyter, vol. 65(1), pages 133-156, January.
    8. David Stadelmann & Steve Billon, 2012. "Capitalisation of Fiscal Variables and Land Scarcity," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 49(7), pages 1571-1594, May.
    9. George R. Zodrow & Peter M. Mieszkowski, 2019. "The New View of the Property Tax: A Reformulation," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: George R Zodrow (ed.), TAXATION IN THEORY AND PRACTICE Selected Essays of George R. Zodrow, chapter 14, pages 437-459, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    10. IREGUI, Ana María & Ligia Melo & Jorge Ramos, 2005. "El impuesto predial en Colombia: factores explicativos del recaudo," Revista de Economía del Rosario, Universidad del Rosario, June.
    11. Zahirovich-Herbert, Velma & Gibler, Karen M., 2014. "The effect of new residential construction on housing prices," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 1-18.
    12. H. Spencer Banzhaf & Kyle Mangum, 2019. "Capitalization as a Two-Part Tariff: The Role of Zoning," NBER Working Papers 25699, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Marcus Berliant & Chia-Ming Yu, 2015. "Locational Signaling And Agglomeration," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(5), pages 757-773, November.
    14. John P. Conley & Myrna Holtz Wooders, 1998. "The Tiebout Hypothesis: On the Existence of Pareto Efficient Competitive Equilibrium," Working Papers mwooders-98-06, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    15. Fullerton, Don & Metcalf, Gilbert E., 2002. "Tax incidence," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 26, pages 1787-1872, Elsevier.
    16. J. Vernon Henderson & Jacques-Francois Thisse, 2001. "On Strategic Community Development," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 109(3), pages 546-569, June.
    17. Christian Kuster & Ana M. Golpe Cervelo, 2021. "Uso de los modelos de costeo en la toma de decisiones: evidencia empírica en evaluaciones diagnósticas aplicadas en cursos de grado, posgrado y empresariales en Uruguay, Brasil y Colombia," Proyecciones, IIEC, Univeridad Nacional de La Plata., Instituto de Investigaciones y Estudios Contables, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, issue 15, pages 1-16, January-D.
    18. Loumeau, Gabriel, 2023. "Locating Public Facilities: Theory and Micro Evidence from Paris," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    19. Alain Guengant, 1993. "Équité, efficacité et égalisation fiscale territoriale," Revue Économique, Programme National Persée, vol. 44(4), pages 835-848.
    20. de Bartolome, Charles A. M. & Ross, Stephen L., 2003. "Equilibria with local governments and commuting: income sorting vs income mixing," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 1-20, July.

    More about this item

    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:nbr:nberwo:1080. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.