IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cmf/wpaper/wp2024_2404.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Why Not Tax It? The Effects of Property Taxes on House Price and Homeownership

Author

Listed:

Abstract

How do property taxes affect house prices, homeownership, and welfare? I focus on Italy, a country with high homeownership, an outdated property tax system, and failed reform attempts. As in many other countries, owner-occupied houses are exempt from property taxes in Italy. Additionally, property taxes are calculated using outdated cadastral values. I show that using cadastral values creates a regressive property tax since cadastral values are relatively lower for more expensive housing units. I develop a life-cycle model with endogenous homeownership to assess the effects of reforming the current system. My findings show that removing the owner-occupied exemption and adjusting cadastral values to market values increases government property tax revenues as a percentage of GDP by over 0.8 percentage points but also increases homeownership rates by 1.2 percentage points. The increase in homeownership results from lower property tax rates on smaller houses. Finally, I show that in the short run, the reform increases the welfare of young households but lowers the welfare of older ones. In the long run, welfare increases for new generations. Higher welfare is mainly due to the decrease in house prices in equilibrium.

Suggested Citation

  • Francesco Chiocchio, 2024. "Why Not Tax It? The Effects of Property Taxes on House Price and Homeownership," Working Papers wp2024_2404, CEMFI.
    • Handle: RePEc:cmf:wpaper:wp2024_2404
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cemfi.es/ftp/wp/2404.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Piazzesi, M. & Schneider, M., 2016. "Housing and Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1547-1640, Elsevier.
    2. Gonzalo Paz-Pardo, 2024. "Homeownership and Portfolio Choice over the Generations," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 16(1), pages 207-237, January.
    3. Hans A. Holter & Dirk Krueger & Serhiy Stepanchuk, 2019. "How do tax progressivity and household heterogeneity affect Laffer curves?," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 10(4), pages 1317-1356, November.
    4. Nicola Borri & Pietro Reichlin, 2021. "Optimal Taxation with Home Ownership and Wealth Inequality," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 40, pages 64-84, April.
    5. Fernández-Villaverde, Jesús & Krueger, Dirk, 2011. "Consumption And Saving Over The Life Cycle: How Important Are Consumer Durables?," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 15(5), pages 725-770, November.
    6. Alberto Alesina & Matteo Paradisi, 2017. "Political budget cycles: Evidence from Italian cities," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(2), pages 157-177, July.
    7. Nicola Borri & Pietro Reichlin, 2021. "Optimal Taxation with Home Ownership and Wealth Inequality," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 40, pages 64-84, April.
    8. Giovanna Messina & Marco Savegnago, 2015. "Le imposte sulla prima casa in Italia, un equilibrio difficile fra decentramento e redistribuzione," ECONOMIA PUBBLICA, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2015(3), pages 5-29.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Bonnet, Odran & Chapelle, Guillaume & Trannoy, Alain & Wasmer, Etienne, 2021. "Land is back, it should be taxed, it can be taxed," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    2. Spencer Bastani & Sebastian Koehne, 2024. "How Should Consumption Be Taxed?," FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 80(3), pages 259-302.
    3. Monika Piazzesi & Martin Schneider, 2009. "Inflation and the price of real assets," Staff Report 423, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    4. Piazzesi, Monika & Leombroni, Matteo & Rogers, Ciaran & Schneider, Martin, 2020. "Inflation and the Price of Real Assets," CEPR Discussion Papers 14390, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Shulu Che & Ronald Ravinesh Kumar & Peter J. Stauvermann, 2021. "Taxation of Land and Economic Growth," Economies, MDPI, vol. 9(2), pages 1-20, April.
    6. Dirk Krueger & Egor Malkov & Fabrizio Perri, 2023. "How Do Households Respond to Income Shocks?," Staff Report 655, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    7. Carro, Adrian, 2023. "Taming the housing roller coaster: The impact of macroprudential policy on the house price cycle," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 156(C).
    8. Leo Kaas & Georgi Kocharkov & Edgar Preugschat & Nawid Siassi, 2021. "Low Homeownership in Germany—a Quantitative Exploration," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 19(1), pages 128-164.
    9. Alexander Ludwig & Jochen Mankart & Jorge Quintana & Mirko Wiederholt & Nathanael Vellekoop, 2019. "House Price Expectations and Housing Choice," 2019 Meeting Papers 848, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    10. Adrian Carro, 2022. "Could Spain be less different? Exploring the effects of macroprudential policy on the house price cycle," Working Papers 2230, Banco de España.
    11. Moore, Rachel & Pecoraro, Brandon, 2021. "Quantitative Analysis of a Wealth Tax in the United States: Exclusions, Evasion, and Expenditures," MPRA Paper 109120, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Heer, Burkhard & Polito, Vito & Wickens, Michael R., 2020. "Population aging, social security and fiscal limits," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    13. Grossmann, Volker & Larin, Benjamin & Löfflad, Hans Torben & Steger, Thomas, 2021. "Distributional consequences of surging housing rents," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    14. Aydilek, Asiye, 2016. "The allocation of time and puzzling profiles of the elderly," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 515-526.
    15. Peter Spáč, 2021. "Pork barrel politics and electoral returns at the local level," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 188(3), pages 479-501, September.
    16. Röhrs, Sigrid & Winter, Christoph, 2017. "Reducing government debt in the presence of inequality," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 1-20.
    17. Charles Ka Yui Leung & Joe Cho Yiu Ng, 2018. "Macro Aspects of Housing," GRU Working Paper Series GRU_2018_016, City University of Hong Kong, Department of Economics and Finance, Global Research Unit.
    18. Kim, H. Youn, 2017. "The permanent income hypothesis, transitional dynamics, and excess sensitivity of consumption," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 10-25.
    19. Antonio C. David & Can Sever, 2024. "Electoral cycles in tax reforms," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 67(2), pages 495-529, August.
    20. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/vbu6kd1s68o6r34k5bcm3iopv is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Charles Ka Yui Leung & Joe Cho Yiu Ng & Edward Tang, 2020. "Why is the Hong Kong Housing Market Unaffordable? Some Stylized Facts and Estimations," Globalization Institute Working Papers 380, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Property taxes and assessment; housing markets; homeownership; wealth accumulation and bequests.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D15 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Intertemporal Household Choice; Life Cycle Models and Saving
    • H24 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Personal Income and Other Nonbusiness Taxes and Subsidies
    • H31 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Household
    • R21 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Housing Demand

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:cmf:wpaper:wp2024_2404. 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: Araceli Requerey (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cemfies.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.