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Tax-Exempt Bonds Really Do Subsidize Municipal Capital!

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  • Fortune, Peter

Abstract

A New View of tax exemp-tion rejects the Traditional View that tax exemption gives a capital cost subsidy measured by the difference between taxable and tax-exempt interest rates. This paper develops a decisive voter model in which the New View is a special case. It considers the effects of several financial assumptions underlying the New View. It is shown that when leverage-related costs affect private as well as municipal debt, when voters are liquidity constrained, and when voters face limits on their private debt capacity, the effect of tax exemption on the municipal cost of capital is very close to the effect predicted by the naive Traditional View.

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  • Fortune, Peter, 1998. "Tax-Exempt Bonds Really Do Subsidize Municipal Capital!," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 51(1), pages 43-54, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:ntj:journl:v:51:y:1998:i:1:p:43-54
    DOI: 10.1086/NTJ41789310
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    1. Hulten, Charles R. & Schwab, Robert M., 1991. "A Haig-Simons-Tiebout Comprehensive Income Tax," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 44(1), pages 67-78, March.
    2. Metcalf, G.E., 1991. "The Role Of Federal Taxation In The Supply Of Municipal Bonds: Evidence From Municipal Governments," Papers 72, Princeton, Woodrow Wilson School - John M. Olin Program.
    3. Fortune, Peter, 1998. "Tax-Exempt Bonds Really Do Subsidize Municipal Capital!," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 51(1), pages 43-54, March.
    4. Hulten, Charles R. & Schwab, Robert M., 1991. "A Haig-Simons-Tiebout Comprehensive Income Tax," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 44(1), pages 67-78, March.
    5. Gordon, Roger H & Slemrod, Joel, 1983. "A General Equilibrium Simulation Study of Subsidies to Municipal Expenditures," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 38(2), pages 585-594, May.
    6. Peter Fortune, 1984. "Tax Exemption and Resource Allocation: Implications for Prices, Production, and Factor Choice," Public Finance Review, , vol. 12(3), pages 347-364, July.
    7. Peter Fortune, 1992. "The municipal bond market, part II: problems and policies," New England Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, issue May, pages 47-64.
    8. Roger H. Gordon & Gilbert E. Metcalf, 1991. "Do Tax-Exempt Bonds Really Subsidize Municipal Capital?," NBER Working Papers 3835, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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    Cited by:

    1. Fortune, Peter, 1998. "Tax-exempt Bonds Really Do Subsidize Municipal Capital!," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 51(n. 1), pages 43-54, March.
    2. Bruno Sultanum & Zachary Bethune, 2016. "Decentralized Trade with Private Values," 2016 Meeting Papers 1630, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    3. Thomas Luke Spreen & Ed Gerrish, 2022. "Taxes and tax‐exempt bonds: A literature review," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(4), pages 767-808, September.
    4. Fortune, Peter, 1998. "Tax-Exempt Bonds Really Do Subsidize Municipal Capital!," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 51(1), pages 43-54, March.
    5. M.S. Tumanggor, 2020. "Issuance of Municipal Bonds through Capital Markets as Financial Revenue for Regional Development," International Journal of Economics & Business Administration (IJEBA), International Journal of Economics & Business Administration (IJEBA), vol. 0(3), pages 326-334.

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