IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ecorec/v54y1978i1p127-139.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Equity of Alternative Policies for the Australian Homeowner

Author

Listed:
  • D. M. KIEFER

Abstract

The income‐tax treatment of homeowners and renters is an important instrument of national housing policy. Major changes in the treatment of homeowners occurred in 1975 and 1976; the second change focused especially on the problems of first‐buyers and was coincident with an expanded home‐savings grant scheme. As a further reform several writers have advocated the taxation of the rent imputed to homeowners. This paper develops a user cost of capital approach to estimate the distribution of housing costs along the income scale and between policy alternatives. The model indicates the vital importance of accounting for inflation whenever physical housing costs are inflating but mortgage costs are fixed in nominal terms. Although inflation is increasing housing costs at all income levels, high‐income homeowners appear to be suffering the greatest cost increases as the result of inflation. Furthermore, unless mortgages are indexed, the customary imputed‐rent formula is regressive.

Suggested Citation

  • D. M. Kiefer, 1978. "The Equity of Alternative Policies for the Australian Homeowner," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 54(1), pages 127-139, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:ecorec:v:54:y:1978:i:1:p:127-139
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-4932.1978.tb00321.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4932.1978.tb00321.x
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1475-4932.1978.tb00321.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Peter L. Swan, 1976. "Income Taxes, Profit Taxes and Neutrality of Optimizing Decisions," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 52(2), pages 166-181, June.
    2. B. F. Reece, 1975. "The Income Tax Incentive to Owner‐occupied Housing in Australia," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 51(2), pages 218-231, June.
    3. repec:bla:ecorec:v:51:y:1975:i:134:p:218-31 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gavin A. Wood & Peter A. Kemp, 2003. "The Taxation of Australian Landlords: Would the British Tax Treatment of Rental Investments Increase Tax Burdens if Introduced in Australia?," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 40(4), pages 747-765, April.
    2. Judith Yates, 1982. "An Analysis of the Distributional Impact of Imputed Rent Taxation," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 58(2), pages 177-189, June.
    3. Gavin Wood & Rachel Ong & Melek Cigdem, 2016. "Housing Tax Reform: Is There a Way Forward?," Economic Papers, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 35(4), pages 332-346, December.
    4. J. W. Nevile & B. Tran‐Nam & J. Vipond & N. A. Warren, 1987. "A Simple Model of Recent Changes in the Residential Property Market," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 63(3), pages 270-280, September.
    5. Roslyn Anstie & Christopher Findlay & Ian Harper, 1983. "The Impact of Inflation and Taxation on Tenure Choice and the Redistributive Effects of Home‐Mortgage Interest Rate ReguIation," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 59(2), pages 105-110, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Peter L. Swan, 1978. "The Mathews Report on Business Taxation," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 54(1), pages 1-16, April.
    2. Craig Emerson & Ross Garnaut, 1984. "Mineral Leasing Policy: Competitive Bidding and the Resource Rent Tax Given Various Responses to Risk," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 60(2), pages 133-142, June.
    3. Ross Garnaut & Anthony Clunies Ross, 1979. "The Neutrality of the Resource Rent Tax," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 55(3), pages 193-201, September.
    4. Craig Emerson, 1980. "Taxing Natural Resource Projects," Natural Resources Forum, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 4(2), pages 123-145, April.
    5. R. R. Officer, 1982. "Company Tax Systems and their Effects on Investors," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 58(4), pages 339-351, December.
    6. Wayne Mayo, 1979. "Rent Royalties," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 55(3), pages 202-213, September.
    7. Judith Yates, 1982. "An Analysis of the Distributional Impact of Imputed Rent Taxation," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 58(2), pages 177-189, June.
    8. Smith, B., 1999. "The Impossibility of a Neutral Resource Rent Tax," ANU Working Papers in Economics and Econometrics 1999-380, Australian National University, College of Business and Economics, School of Economics.
    9. CRAIG EMERSON and P. J. LLOYD, 1983. "Improving Mineral Taxation Policy in Australia," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 59(3), pages 232-244, September.
    10. Robert Albon, 1978. "Rent Control, A Costly Redistributive Device? The Case of Canberra," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 54(3), pages 303-313, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ecorec:v:54:y:1978:i:1:p:127-139. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/esausea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.