Winners and losers from property taxation

Kasper Kragh Balke, Markus Karlman and Karin Kinnerud

Quantitative Economics, 2025, vol. 16, issue 4, 1147-1187

Abstract: This paper considers optimal taxation of housing capital. To this end, we employ a life‐cycle model calibrated to the U.S. economy, where asset holdings and labor productivity vary across households, and tax reforms lead to changes in house and rental prices, interest rates, and wages. We find that the optimal property tax in the long run is considerably higher than today, partly due to the relatively inelastic demand and supply of housing. A higher property tax also reduces house prices and causes a reallocation from housing to business capital, which in turn decreases interest rates and increases wages. These equilibrium effects allow for an improved consumption smoothing over the life cycle. However, most current households would incur substantial welfare losses from an implementation of a higher property tax, since house prices fall, and a majority own their home. Hence, when accounting for transitional dynamics, it is not clear that a higher property tax is feasible or preferred.

Date: 2025
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