Political Economy of the Parcel Tax in California School Districts

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (5) ◽  
pp. 864-892 ◽  
Author(s):  
Soomi Lee
Keyword(s):  
Public Education ◽  
School Districts ◽  
Property Tax ◽  
Property Values ◽  
Tax Rates ◽  
Price Distribution ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Regressive Tax ◽  
Home Values ◽  
Heckman Selection

This article examines the effect of home price distribution on the likelihood of parcel tax adoption in California school districts. A parcel tax is a regressive tax imposed as the same amount per unit of property regardless of property values and requires a two-thirds supermajority vote to be adopted. Despite the growing role that local parcel taxes have in funding public education, it has not been fully understood how their regressive nature influences adoption. I argue that because the regressive tax imposes different marginal property tax rates for voters, the distribution of home prices within a district determines the likelihood of parcel tax adoption. Using the Heckman selection models with California school district–level data, I find that a large gap in home values within a district significantly lowers the likelihood of parcel tax adoption.

scholarly journals The Fiscal Effects of Tax Increment Financing on Rural School Districts: The Case of Iowa

AERA Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 233285842199114
Author(s):  
Phuong Nguyen-Hoang
Keyword(s):  
Rural Communities ◽  
School Districts ◽  
Property Tax ◽  
Rural School ◽  
Tax Rates ◽  
Rural School Districts ◽  
Tax Increment Financing ◽  
Tax Base ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
Development Tool

Tax increment financing (TIF)—an economic (re)development tool originally designed for urban cities—has been available to rural communities for decades. This is the first study to focus solely on TIF in rural school districts, to examine TIF effects on school districts’ property tax base and rates, and to conduct event-study estimations of TIF effects. The study finds that TIF has mostly positive effects on rural school districts’ property tax base and mixed effects on property tax rates, and that TIF-induced increases in tax base come primarily from residential property and slightly from commercial property. The study’s findings assert the importance of returned excess increment if rural school districts in Iowa and many other states are to benefit from TIF.

scholarly journals A More Accurate Measure of Local Public Goods: Overlapping Government Combinations as Units of Analysis

2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel B. Stone
Keyword(s):  
School Districts ◽  
Public Goods ◽  
Property Tax ◽  
Metropolitan Region ◽  
Local Public Goods ◽  
Fort Worth ◽  
Tax Rates ◽  
Special Districts ◽  
Units Of Analysis ◽  
Property Owners

This study posits and tests the viability of a new unit of analysis for local public goods in metropolitan areas: overlapping government combinations (OGCs). Counties, municipalities, school districts, and other special districts operate simultaneously within the same space, each providing their own set of local public goods. Residents of the same city can live within the boundaries of different counties, school districts and other special districts and thus receive (and pay for) very different quantities and qualities of public goods. Though there is a great deal of literature devoted to the variation of local public goods in a fragmented metropolitan region, there is none that cumulates the different local government types into units that represent the true bundles of local public goods that are provided to citizens and property owners. This study tackles this problem through the application of geographic information systems (GIS) to stack counties, municipalities, and school districts in the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington CMSA into unique OGCs. The unique OGCs are compared to their underlying component governments with respect to property tax rates and school performance and are found to be statistically distinct.

The Effects of Property Tax Abatements on School District Property Tax Bases and Rates

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-241
Author(s):  
Daphne Kenyon ◽  
Robert Wassmer ◽  
Adam Langley ◽  
Bethany Paquin
Keyword(s):  
Property Tax ◽  
Property Values ◽  
Physical Property ◽  
The United States ◽  
Tax Rates ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Real Property ◽  
Community Reinvestment ◽  
Property B ◽  
Using Data

The authors analyze the effects of property tax abatement on the property tax base and rates of school districts within a municipality offering the abatement using data from Franklin County, Ohio, one of the most populous counties in the United States. An increase in a school district’s Community Reinvestment Area abatement intensity correlates with (a) a decrease in the mill rate for real property, (b) a decrease in effective residential and nonresidential property tax rates, and (c) an increase in total market value of property. While these effects are small, they indicate that a municipality’s decision to abate has generated enough growth in property values, either through improvements to physical property or positive capitalization for existing property values, to offset the negative effects of an abatement. The reason for this may be that the restrictions and oversight used in this abatement program are greater than in most other places.

scholarly journals House Prices & Property Tax Revenues During the Boom & Bust: Evidence from Small-Area Estimates

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher B Goodman
Keyword(s):  
House Prices ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Property Tax ◽  
Effective Property ◽  
Tax Revenue ◽  
Tax Rates ◽  
House Values ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Tax Revenues ◽  
Home Values

Although the Great Recession put the U.S. economy into a tailspin, we know little about how the changes in house prices influenced property tax collections. Using local level housing data from Zillow matched to property tax data from 1998 to 2012, two questions are examined. First, the elasticity of property tax revenue with respect to house values is estimated. Second, the timing of this elasticity is determined. The analysis rules out that local policymakers capture the entire increase of house value in property tax revenues but unable to rule out that increases in house values are completely offset by changes in effective property tax rates. Decreases in values have an elasticity between 0.3 and 0.4 and take three years for changes in values to impact property tax revenues. While property tax collections declined, local policymakers adjusted effective millage rates such that revenues did not decline as much as home values.

scholarly journals A Land Value Capture Property Tax Schedule for Municipal Infrastructure Financing in Lagos State, Nigeria

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-105
Author(s):  
Funlola Famuyiwa ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Precise Measurement ◽  
Property Tax ◽  
Property Values ◽  
Property Taxes ◽  
Hedonic Regression ◽  
Tax Rates ◽  
Land Value ◽  
Value Capture ◽  
Lagos State ◽  
Infrastructure Services

This study develops a land value capture property tax rates schedule for use in Lagos state, Nigeria, in order to aid sustainability in municipal infrastructure financing. With the poor state of infrastructure in Lagos, the LVC property tax is advanced as a sustainable means of infrastructure reform through equitable rates. Using a sample from Alimosho - the largest local government area in Lagos - a hedonic regression model is used to determine the financial contributions of municipal infrastructure in property values to show their varying influences. From the regression analysis, the schedule is then derived, which is broadly premised on a quid pro quo basis. This stems from the fair notion that the pecuniary influences of municipal infrastructure should be recovered in the form of property taxes for public gains. Not previously done in the region, the schedule determines rates payable on property taxes and are reflective of the monetary influences that municipal infrastructure confer on property values. The proposed rates schedule also take into account varying distances of locational infrastructure and their impacts on property values. The use of Geographic Positioning System (GPS) in the study represents an advancement of previous Nigerian studies on infrastructure and property values where fewer infrastructure types have been considered or less precise measurement indices have been used. The study concludes that this LVC property tax approach will engender a sustainable, equitable, and efficient source of local financing for infrastructure delivery and operations. This is because it builds a veritable rates base and it enables ratepayers to face the actual costs of benefits received from infrastructure services.

Implicit Taxes Amid Race to the Bottom in a Global Tax Game

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 42
Author(s):  
Igor Semenenko ◽  
Junwook Yoo ◽  
Parporn Akathaporn
Keyword(s):  
Capital Mobility ◽  
Tax Rates ◽  
Corporate Tax ◽  
Firm Level ◽  
Race To The Bottom ◽  
Tax Subsidy ◽  
Tax Subsidies ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Tax Returns ◽  
Tax Hypothesis

Growing tax competition among national governments in the presence of capital mobility distorts equilibrium in the international corporate tax market. This paper is related to the literature that examines impact of international tax policies on corporate accounting statements. Employing international firm-level data, this study revisits the race-to-the-bottom hypothesis and documents that tax exemptions lowering effective tax rates relative to statutory rates increase pre-tax returns. This finding directly contradicts the implicit tax hypothesis documented by Wilkie (1992), who provided empirical evidence on inverse relationship between pre-tax return and tax subsidy. We also find evidences that relative importance of permanent versus timing component depends on the geography and that decline in corporate tax rates reduces impact of tax subsidies on profitability. Our findings suggest that tax subsidies play a different role than in 1968-1985, which was examined by Wilkie (1992). These results are consistent with the race-to-the-bottom hypothesis and income shifting explanation

Whose money matters in public education: A “public” good that parents purchase

2021 ◽  
pp. 147821032110343
Author(s):  
Eunju Kang
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Public Education ◽  
School Districts ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
New York State ◽  
Federal State ◽  
Education Funding ◽  
Funding Policy ◽  
State And Local

Instead of asking whether money matters, this paper questions whose money matters in public education. Previous literature on education funding uses an aggregate expenditure per pupil to measure the relationship between education funding and academic performance. Federalism creates mainly three levels of funding sources: federal, state, and local governments. Examining New York State school districts, most equitably funded across school districts among the 50 states, this paper shows that neither federal nor state funds are positively correlated with graduation rates. Only local revenues for school districts indicate a strong positive impact. Parents’ money matters. This finding contributes to a contentious discourse on education funding policy in the governments, courts, and academia with respect to education funding and inequality in American public schools.

scholarly journals USING PARTICIPATORY APPROACH TO IMPROVE AVAILABILITY OF SPATIAL DATA FOR LOCAL GOVERNMENT

2016 ◽  
Vol III-4/W1 ◽  
pp. 139-144
Author(s):  
T. Kliment ◽  
V. Cetl ◽  
H. Tomič ◽  
J. Lisiak ◽  
M. Kliment
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Data ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Property Tax ◽  
Open Data ◽  
Quality Level ◽  
Tax Rates ◽  
Geospatial Information ◽  
Data Infrastructure ◽  
Participatory Gis

Nowadays, the availability of authoritative geospatial features of various data themes is becoming wider on global, regional and national levels. The reason is existence of legislative frameworks for public sector information and related spatial data infrastructure implementations, emergence of support for initiatives as open data, big data ensuring that online geospatial information are made available to digital single market, entrepreneurs and public bodies on both national and local level. However, the availability of authoritative reference spatial data linking the geographic representation of the properties and their owners are still missing in an appropriate quantity and quality level, even though this data represent fundamental input for local governments regarding the register of buildings used for property tax calculations, identification of illegal buildings, etc. We propose a methodology to improve this situation by applying the principles of participatory GIS and VGI used to collect observations, update authoritative datasets and verify the newly developed datasets of areas of buildings used to calculate property tax rates issued to their owners. The case study was performed within the district of the City of Požega in eastern Croatia in the summer 2015 and resulted in a total number of 16072 updated and newly identified objects made available online for quality verification by citizens using open source geospatial technologies.

scholarly journals Martínez v. State of New Mexico: The Right to a Sufficient Education

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 106
Author(s):  
Diana Torres-Velásquez
Keyword(s):  
English Language Learners ◽  
New Mexico ◽  
Public Education ◽  
School Districts ◽  
Students With Disabilities ◽  
Low Income ◽  
School Finance ◽  
English Language ◽  
District Court ◽  
Education Department

Plaintiffs in the Martínez v. State of New Mexico lawsuit are 51 students, parents, and guardians from seven public school districts across New Mexico. This is a school finance case that goes beyond seeking more funds for public education to arguing that providing a sufficient education for New Mexico’s 338,307 students enrolled during the 2016-2017 school year (New Mexico Public Education Department, 2017) involves more than increasing the amount of money allocated for pupils across its 89 school districts. Although the plaintiffs in this case represent low-income and high-need families of many ethnic backgrounds in New Mexico, students who are English Language Learners, and students with disabilities, the outcome has the potential to affect every student, teacher, and administrator in the state. The trial will begin on June 12th of 2017. When the case was originally filed in 2014, New Mexico’s Public Education Department (NMPED)—the defendants in this case—immediately countered with a motion to dismiss. In October of 2014, as First District Court Chief Judge Sarah Singleton rejected the motion to dismiss, she also used the opportunity to declare public education a fundamental right in New Mexico. Martínez v State of New Mexico (2014a) has the potential to transform not only the definition of equal protection and educational equity under the law, but also to correct the discriminatory and punitive practices of current reform agendas. The author examines the possibilities of law as a form of social resistance using Martínez v. State of New Mexico (2014a)—a legal case on school finance—and the concept of sufficient education as guaranteed by the New Mexico State Constitution.

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