Much contemporary economic growth in Africa is driven by urban service sectors including construction and real estate. This manifests in rapidly transforming landscapes and the proliferation of valuable property in the continent's booming large cities, often accompanied by growing socio-economic...

Findings by various researchers suggest that ad valorem malassessments are best understood if one realizes their political consequences for assessing officials. High assessment dispersion often results from the assessors' sensitivities to political influence. Also, political incentives may...

This article evaluates two alternative standards for resetting property assessments on title transfer in property tax systems like Oregon's and California's, which are explicitly designed to protect property owners against rapid, unanticipated increases in their tax bills: California's reset to...

Nonprofit charitable organizations are exempt from most taxes, including local property taxes, but U.S. cities and towns increasingly request that nonprofits make payments in lieu of taxes (known as PILOTs). Strictly speaking, PILOTs are voluntary, though nonprofits may feel pressure to make...

Optimal government unit size is a subject of continued concern among tax economists. Aspiring for the economies of scale and cost savings, Indiana recently consolidated its township assessor functions to the county level. This paper finds that following reform the new structure resulted in...

In 2011, the pilot property tax was introduced in two cities in China, Shanghai and Chongqing. This article focuses on comparing the effects and results of the tax in the two cities after implementing the tax for one year in four aspects: the taxpayers, the real estate market, the local revenue...

We analyze the spread of use-value assessment (UVA) programs applied to agricultural and rural land for property tax purposes across the 50 states. Taxing such land on the basis of its current use in agriculture rather than its full market value can confer significant property tax reductions on...

This study has at its origin the land question in Paraguay, namely that land ownership is highly concentrated and has become a source of social conflict in the rural areas where one-half of the population lives. A central thesis of the study is that the existing patterns of land use and...