The aim of this report, the IFS's first in-depth analysis of the Scottish Government Budget, is to look at some of the key implications for the coming year, and for the longer term. We do not attempt to cover all of the different services that the Scottish Government is responsible for, or all...

We study the impact of commercial property taxation on vacancy rates and rents in the UK, using a new data-set, and exploiting exogenous variations in property tax rates from reliefs in the UK system: small business rate relief (SBRR), retail relief and empty property relief. We estimate that...

What is the effect of e-commerce on the geographic distribution of local sales tax revenues? Using COVID-19 as a shock to online shopping and hand-collected high-frequency data on local sales tax revenue, we document an important shift in the state and local public finance landscape. As...

We investigate the effect on municipality spending efficiency of a local property tax reform, which reduced in 2008 the upper limit of the property tax. We compute municipality efficiency scores via data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) from 2005 to 2011, and then we rely in a panel data set to...

We study the consequences of a large-scale austerity program targeting financially-constrained municipalities in Germany. For identification, we exploit the quasi-random assignment of treatment among equally-distressed municipalities using a difference-in-differences design. The policy helped...

In this paper we examine how Finnish municipalities' expenditures depend on the share of citizens with foreign background out of the total population. Empirical analyses make use of Finnish panel data from 295 municipalities and 202 migrant nationalities for the period 1987- 2018. It turns out...

We develop a model of property taxation and characterize equilibria under three alternative taxation regimes often used in the public finance literature: decentralized taxation, centralized taxation, and "rent seeking" regimes. We show that decentralized taxation results in inefficiently high...

Social inequalities are a significant challenge in developing countries. Therefore, they should be treated as a leading priority in boosting socio-economic development. Such inequalities are a growing challenge for Poland. It is believed that social inequalities are behind Poland's relatively...

Low tax compliance in low- and middle-income countries around the world limits the ability of governments to offer effective public services. This paper reports the results of a randomly rolled out text message campaign aimed at promoting tax compliance among landowners in Dar es Salaam,...

Intellectual property is key aspect for the economic development” Intellectual property is a form ofcreation which includes intangible form of property which is created from the human intellect and thevarious forms of such intellectual property are patents, copyrights, trademarks etc and...

This paper attempts to address two long standing questions in Public Finance: (i) why is the property tax, despite popular complaints about its fairness, the almost exclusive tax instrument used by local governments, and (ii) why do we consistently observe higher levels of governments undermine...

This paper considers the impact of federal deductibility on the level and composition of state and local taxes. It also considers the importance of deductibility in determining the vote of state Congressional delegations on the Tax Reform Act of 1986. Particular emphasis should be placed on the...

This paper provides careful estimates of the impact of removing the deductibility of state and local taxes by state andby income class. We show how deductibility affects marginal and average tax rates for both state and federal tax systems. One striking result is that combined federal income tax...

We investigate the effect on municipality spending efficiency of a local property tax reform, which reduced in 2008 the upper limit of the property tax. We compute municipality efficiency scores via data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) from 2005 to 2011, and then we rely in a panel data set to...

I compare the impact of local tax revenue and royalties from the extraction of natural resources on governance in Colombian municipalities, leveraging plausibly exogenous variation from cadastral updates and fluctuations in the world price of oil. Higher tax revenue has a larger effect on local...

One function of the tax code is to implement social policy, incentivizing members of the public to make decisions policymakers believe to be desirable. But the tax code is complex and acquiring and processing complex information is costly. In this study, we hypothesize that tax preparers serve...

Since the first ship of enslaved African people landed in Virginia in 1619, racist policies in institutions, systems, structures, practices, and laws have ensured inequity for people of color. These racist policies include every imaginable variant of injustice from slavery to lynching, to...

Property Tax in the real estate market plays a vital role in any area. It is paid annually or semi-annually to the municipal corporation of the concerned area, for building: residential and commercial, including the ones rented to others. Property tax is inclusive of various other types of taxes...

Real property tax belongs to traditional taxes, often imposed as a local tax. The same applies to V4 countries (Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland), however, the budgetary significance of its revenues differs across these states and so does their approach to its regulation. In this...

This paper investigates the simultaneous relationship between tax rates and city property tax bases using data for 86 large U.S. cities in 1967, 1972, 1977, and 1982. We find that a 10 percent increase in the city's property tax rate decreases the city's tax base by about 1.5 percent. In...

This study examines the size and diversity of tax expenditures (TEs) by gminas (municipalities) in Poland between 2007 and 2019. Consequences of gminas' taxing power and the reduction of revenues resulting from statutory tax preferences were taken into account. To analyze the data, we used:...

This study examines the size and diversity of tax expenditures (TEs) by gminas (municipalities) in Poland between 2007 and 2019. Consequences of gminas' taxing power and the reduction of revenues resulting from statutory tax preferences were taken into account. To analyze the data, we used:...

I analyze mobility responses to the unique introduction of regressive local income schedule in the Swiss Canton of Obwalden in 2006, which was aimed at attracting the top 1%. Differencein-Differences estimations comparing Obwalden to all other cantons confirm that the reform successfully...

Even before the pandemic, an ageing population, a potential over-reliance on corporation tax receipts and an inevitable decline in motor tax revenues combined to make the need for future tax rises likely. This paper examines a range of options that a government seeking to raise or replace tax...

This paper reveals a noticeable difference between a high degree of progressivity of incomerelated local property tax relief versus the proportional or regressive incidence of recognition tax relief. Recognition tax relief is tax relief given to specified social sectors which recognizes either...

While tax corruption is widespread in many countries with inferior business environments, it is unclear how the characteristics of taxpayers influence their tax behaviour. This study investigates the impact of manager expertise on firms' tax corruption in a transition economy. Using a...

This study provides an empirical investigation of fiscal interactions in the context of a developing country. I examine three fiscal components - budget balance, tax revenue, and public spending - to measure spatial interactions between Colombian municipalities from 2000 to 2010. I am using...

This article examines fiscal illusions inpublic finance systems where decentralisation involving the introduction of an independent and autonomous component oflocal government funding brings new problems. It presents a synthesis ofthe findings from a Polish empirical study that set out to...

We study the fiscal and tax response to intergovernmental grants, exploiting quasi-experimental variation within Germany’s fiscal equalization scheme triggered by Census revisions of official population counts. Municipal budgets do not adjust instantly. Instead, spending and investments adapt...