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Do local governments tax homeowner communities differently?

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  • Füss, Roland
  • Lerbs, Oliver

Abstract

This paper investigates whether and how strongly the share of homeowners in a community affects residential property taxation by local governments. Different from renters, homeowners bear the full property tax burden irrespective of local market conditions, and the tax is more salient to them. "Homeowner communities" may hence oppose high property taxes in order to protect their housing wealth. Using granular spatial data from a complete housing inventory in the 2011 German Census and historical war damages as a source of exogenous variation in local homeownership, we provide empirical evidence that otherwise identical jurisdictions charge significantly lower property taxes when the share of homeowners in their population is higher. This result is invariant to local market conditions, which suggests tax salience as the key mechanism behind this effect. We find positive spatial dependence in tax multipliers, indicative of property tax mimicking by local governments.

Suggested Citation

  • Füss, Roland & Lerbs, Oliver, 2017. "Do local governments tax homeowner communities differently?," ZEW Discussion Papers 17-036, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:zewdip:17036
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    2. Oliviero, Tommaso & Scognamiglio, Annalisa, 2019. "Property tax and property values: Evidence from the 2012 Italian tax reform," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 227-251.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    homeownership; public financing; residential property tax; spatial tax mimicking; yardstick competition;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • H20 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - General
    • H31 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Household
    • H71 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue
    • R31 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location - - - Housing Supply and Markets

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