THE INHERENTLY (UN)JUST REAL PROPERTY TAX

Property tax reform in India

The property tax is an important local revenue source in many countries, but it is often underused as a source for financing local expenditures. In India, many local governments have initiated administrative and valuation reforms to increase the yield from property taxes. In this paper, we examine the fiscal and distributional implication of the ongoing and potential assessment reforms in two I...

Property tax on privatized roads

Roads cover a significant fraction of the land area in many municipalities. The public provision of roads means this land is exempt from the local property tax. Transferring roads from public to private ownership would not only remove maintenance costs from city budgets, but increase potential property tax revenue as well. This paper calculates the value of the land occupied by roads in sample ...

Property tax exemption for nonprofit hospitals.

This article discusses management practices that hospital administrators can use to minimize the exposure to property taxation. First, the results of a national survey on the extensiveness of property tax exemption are reviewed. Next, a review of the history of recent developments in Utah is presented, including the recent ruling of the Utah State Supreme Court that "nonprofit" status does not ...

An Insurance Model of Property Tax Limitations

Forty-three states in the United States have legal limits on local property taxation. These limits constrain increases in local government revenues, increases in property values, and the level of tax rates. A large literature cites the desire of taxpaying voters to constrain wasteful local government expenditures as the primary motivation for these limitations. The ability of tax limitations to...

The Prevention of Unjust Wars