The Hated Property Tax: Salience, Tax Rates, and Tax Revolts

Marika Cabral and Caroline Hoxby

No 18514, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Because of the obtrusive manner in which they are normally paid, property taxes are likely the most salient taxes in the U.S. However, they are much less salient to homeowners with tax escrow. Exploiting geographical variation in tax escrow, we test how salience affects property tax rates and limits. We instrument for tax escrow using bank holding companies' national mortgage servicing assets, focusing on companies that have local branches but do most of their business outside the area. We find that a one standard deviation increase in tax escrow produces about a one standard deviation decrease in property tax rates.

JEL-codes: B12 H2 H24 H3 H71 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-acc, nep-pbe and nep-ure
Note: ED PE POL
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (112)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w18514.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:18514

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w18514

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().