This article describes the concept of a property levy („Vermögensabgabe“) of the German Green Party in the context of other property related taxes such as real estate tax and inheritance tax. It explains the advantages of a property levy in contrast to a property tax. Moreover, the...

Family entrepreneurs in all honesty cannot grasp this new concept. Just now, while we are still experiencing a worldwide financial and economic crisis, which has by no means been overcome yet, there is talk of increasing taxation of assets. In recent years, small and medium-sized and larger...

The reintroduction of a wealth tax in Germany would not contribute to more fairness in terms of the ability to pay principle. On the contrary: Since wealth in form of human capital is not taxed, a wealth tax would lead to a massive unequal treatment of people with the same ability to pay. The...

The Tiebout model assumes that individuals 'vote with their feet' and choose to locate in the jurisdiction which best matches their fiscal preferences. In this paper, we test Tiebout's voting mechanism by examining whether housing purchase decisions are sensitive to changes in local property tax...

Zoning regulations that include a maximum housing density sometimes require that houses be quot;clusteredquot; in one section of a subdivision and the rest of the land be left as a common green space. We examine house sales in one county on the fringe of the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area...

Each year the Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal publish the Index of Economic Freedom. This major study compiles economic data on more than 150 countries. The compilers divide the data into ten categories, ranging from business freedom to labor freedom. One of the ten categories is...

German municipalities receive almost all of their tax revenue from four different taxes: real property tax, trade tax and shares of value added tax and income tax. Compared with the three latter taxes, real property tax meets the requirements of a rational local tax system in the best way. For...

Norway’s dual income tax system achieves high levels of revenue collection and income redistribution, without overly undermining economic performance and while paying attention to environmental externalities. It treats capital and labour income in different ways: capital income is taxed at a...

The current system of funding local governments in Poland requires changes; within tax revenues the changes should concern the system of property taxes. The reformed property tax should be a potential source of considerable additional commune revenues. The article is aimed at the analysis of how...