IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/2224.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Tax Deductibility and Municipal Budget Structure

Author

Listed:
  • Douglas Holtz-Eakin
  • Harvey S. Rosen

Abstract

This paper investigates the effects of deductibility of local taxes on communities' budgetary decisions. Our focus is on how changes in the tax price of local spending induced by deductibility affect the mix between deductible and nondeductible revenue sources, and on expenditures. The econometric analysis is based on a rich data set that tracks the fiscal behavior of 172 local governments from 1978 to 1980. We find that the elasticity of deductible taxes with respect to the tax price is in the range -1.2 to -1.6; the tax price has no statistically significant effect on the use of nondeductible revenue sources; and the elasticity of local expenditures with respect to the tax price is about -1.8. Hence, if deductibility were eliminated, we would expect to see a substantial decline in local government spending.

Suggested Citation

  • Douglas Holtz-Eakin & Harvey S. Rosen, 1987. "Tax Deductibility and Municipal Budget Structure," NBER Working Papers 2224, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:2224
    Note: PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w2224.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Feldstein, Martin S & Metcalf, Gilbert E, 1987. "The Effect of Federal Tax Deductibility on State and Local Taxes and Spending," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 95(4), pages 710-736, August.
    2. Hettich, Walter & Winer, Stanley, 1984. "A positive model of tax structure," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 67-87, June.
    3. White, Halbert, 1982. "Instrumental Variables Regression with Independent Observations," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(2), pages 483-499, March.
    4. Daniel R. Feenberg & Harvey S. Rosen, 1986. "State Personal Income and Sales Taxes, 1977–1983," NBER Chapters, in: Studies in State and Local Public Finance, pages 135-186, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. White, Halbert, 1980. "A Heteroskedasticity-Consistent Covariance Matrix Estimator and a Direct Test for Heteroskedasticity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(4), pages 817-838, May.
    6. Daniel R. Feenberg & Harvey S. Rosen, 1985. "The Deductibility of State and Local Taxes: Impact Effects by State and Income Class," NBER Working Papers 1768, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Robert P. Inman, 1985. "Does Deductibility Influence Local Taxation?," NBER Working Papers 1714, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    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. Gilbert E. Metcalf, 1991. "The Role of Federal Taxation in the Supply of Municipal Bonds: Evidence From Municipal Governments," NBER Working Papers 3891, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Howard Chernick, 1992. "A Model of the Distributional Incidence of State and Local Taxes," Public Finance Review, , vol. 20(4), pages 572-585, October.
    3. Holtz-Eakin, Douglas & Rosen, Harvey, 1990. "Federal deductibility and local property tax rates," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 269-284, May.
    4. Slemrod, Joel, 1992. "Do Taxes Matter? Lessons from the 1980's," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(2), pages 250-256, May.
    5. Esteller-More, Alex & Sole-Olle, Albert, 2001. "Vertical income tax externalities and fiscal interdependence: evidence from the US," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(2-3), pages 247-272, April.
    6. Gilbert E. Metcalf, 1993. "Tax exporting, federal deductibility, and state tax structure," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 12(1), pages 109-126.
    7. Nechyba, Thomas, 1996. "A computable general equilibrium model of intergovernmental aid," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(3), pages 363-397, November.
    8. Liudmyla Pidchosa & Igor Lyutyy & Oleksandr Pidchosa, 2019. "Decentralization Of Inter-Budget Relations: Theory, Practice, And International Experience," Baltic Journal of Economic Studies, Publishing house "Baltija Publishing", vol. 5(4).
    9. Alberto Sole Olle, 1998. "The effects of tax deductibility on the mix of property taxes and use charges: an empirical analysis of the spanish case," Working Papers in Economics 41, Universitat de Barcelona. Espai de Recerca en Economia.
    10. Janet G. Stotsky, 1990. "The Effect of the Elimination of Sales Tax Deductibility on State Fiscal Decisions," Public Finance Review, , vol. 18(1), pages 25-46, January.

    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. Alberto Sole Olle, 1998. "The effects of tax deductibility on the mix of property taxes and use charges: an empirical analysis of the spanish case," Working Papers in Economics 41, Universitat de Barcelona. Espai de Recerca en Economia.
    2. Holtz-Eakin, Douglas & Rosen, Harvey, 1990. "Federal deductibility and local property tax rates," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 269-284, May.
    3. Janet G. Stotsky, 1990. "The Effect of the Elimination of Sales Tax Deductibility on State Fiscal Decisions," Public Finance Review, , vol. 18(1), pages 25-46, January.
    4. Bound, John & Holzer, Harry J, 2000. "Demand Shifts, Population Adjustments, and Labor Market Outcomes during the 1980s," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 18(1), pages 20-54, January.
    5. Guilhem Bascle, 2008. "Controlling for endogeneity with instrumental variables in strategic management research," Post-Print hal-00576795, HAL.
    6. Bahl, Roy W. & Sjoquist, David L., 1990. "The State and Local Fiscal Outlook: What Have We Learned and Where Are We Headed?," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 43(3), pages 321-42, September.
    7. Jeffrey M. Wooldridge, 2001. "Applications of Generalized Method of Moments Estimation," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 15(4), pages 87-100, Fall.
    8. Roberto Dell’Anno & Jorge Martinez-Vazquez, 2013. "A Behavioral Local Public Finance Perspective on the Renter’s Illusion Hypothesis," International Center for Public Policy Working Paper Series, at AYSPS, GSU paper1303, International Center for Public Policy, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University.
    9. Lawrence Lindsey, 1988. "Federal Deductibility of State and Local Taxes: A Test of Public Choice by Representative Government," NBER Chapters, in: Fiscal Federalism: Quantitative Studies, pages 137-176, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Greene, Kenneth V. & Kang, Byung-Goo, 2004. "The effect of public and private competition on high school outputs in New York State," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 23(5), pages 497-506, October.
    11. Chirinko, Robert S. & Wilsom, Daniel J., 2010. "Can Lower Tax Rates Be Bought? Business Rent-Seeking and Tax Competition Among U.S. States," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 63(4), pages 967-993, December.
    12. Gowrisankaran, Gautam & Town, Robert J., 1999. "Estimating the quality of care in hospitals using instrumental variables," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(6), pages 747-767, December.
    13. Esteller-More, Alex & Sole-Olle, Albert, 2001. "Vertical income tax externalities and fiscal interdependence: evidence from the US," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(2-3), pages 247-272, April.
    14. Poterba, James M., 1995. "Capital budgets, borrowing rules, and state capital spending," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 165-187, February.
    15. Feldstein, Martin S & Metcalf, Gilbert E, 1987. "The Effect of Federal Tax Deductibility on State and Local Taxes and Spending," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 95(4), pages 710-736, August.
    16. Douglas Holtz-Eakin & Whitney K. Newey & Harvey S. Rosen, 1989. "Implementing Causality Tests with Panel Data, with an Example from LocalPublic Finance," NBER Technical Working Papers 0048, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Loeb, Susanna & Socias, Miguel, 2004. "Federal contributions to high-income school districts: the use of tax deductions for funding K-12 education," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 85-94, February.
    18. Elijah Brewer & William E. Jackson, 2002. "Inter-industry contagion and the competitive effects of financial distress announcements: evidence from commercial banks and life insurance companies," Working Paper Series WP-02-23, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    19. Andrew Reschovsky & Howard Chernick, 1989. "Federal Tex Reform and the Taxation of Urban Residents," Public Finance Review, , vol. 17(2), pages 123-157, April.
    20. Petri Rouvinen, 2002. "R&D—Productivity Dynamics: Causality, Lags, and ‘Dry Holes’," Journal of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 5(1), pages 123-156, May.

    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:nbr:nberwo:2224. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.