I develop a framework, based on tax price, that measures the distributional consequences of any alternative property tax base definition. Using administrative data, I show that defining tax base as market value produces large amounts of idiosyncratic tax-price risk. I show that an assessment...

This report looks at local governments’ biggest source of revenue: property taxes. The authors provide a primer on how the taxes are calculated, and new formulas for understanding an individual’s tax share. The authors also propose an alternative format for local property tax statements that...