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Government consolidations remain highly controversial, and the proposition that consolidated governments operate more efficiently than smaller government units is a contested claim. This research evaluates the outcomes of Indiana property tax consolidation reform of 2008. It documents 19.0–27.0 percent cost savings from consolidated tax administration and estimates cost elasticities. The study finds that assessment costs are highly elastic to assessor workloads, wage levels, and the percentage of agricultural land, but not the assessment quality. Although these findings may assist other fragmented local government units in evaluating vertical consolidation proposals, they may not directly generalize to other areas of government.

The local property tax is the oldest tax in the United States, as well as being the only substantial tax on landed wealth, a major part of the housing expense of most American families, and the most important revenue source for local governments. It is also increasingly limited by state law. This chapter presents a synthetic review of the literature on property tax limitation laws. Property taxation is a crucial resource for local governments because it is primarily a tax on real estate, and land is the least mobile tax base. A tax on the market value of real estate may have the effect of transmitting real estate price shocks to individual land users. Property tax limitation laws provide some homeowners with social protection from such market-induced economic shocks, but they do so at the price of a substantial reduction in state capacity. A meta-regression analysis of published studies finds that property tax levy limitations, on average, reduce local government budgets by as much as 5%. The potential implications for provision of other public goods, including social protection for other groups, are discussed.

Abstract. In the 19th century state‐appointed tax revision commissions began to influence the reform of the property tax. By 1893, some 28 commissions had been appointed. Their remarkably similar calls for reform set the parameters for much of the academic research in the 20th century when this tax instrument was transformed from a local tax to a federal‐state‐local exaction. As now administered, the property tax is no longer a unified tax. Separate assessment criteria make it a tax on mines, utilities, business property, household personalty and on housing. The latter is modified in different ways by homestead exemption(41 states), circuit breakers (50 sates) and use of classified schedules (17 states). Along with unprofessional and inaccurate assessments as well as politicized assessment practices, this has changed the tax to a general title for disparate fiscal activities in the 68,000 jurisdictions that use the property tax.

This note provides an overview of the current property taxation system in the Punjab Province based on the premise that the property tax: 1) is essentially a fiscal tool; 2) is not an instrument of social redistribution; 3) system should be kept simple; and 4) is a technical instrument with strong financial, institutional, and political connotations. This note summarizes the key attributes of the present property taxation system of the Punjab Province and proposes some solutions for improving the property tax system.

"Real Property Tax in Local Public Finance" published on by Oxford University Press.

State and local governments use many types of property tax incentives to increasebusiness development. This report reviews those incentives, summarizes the literatureregarding their effectiveness, and makes recommendations for reforming their use tohelp policy makers and local government officials improve the odds of achieving theirdevelopment goals.