Urban property tax reform : guidelines and recommendations

About

Countries

Data & Research

Learning

News

Projects & Operations

Publications

Topics

Home > Data & Research > Document Search > Report Details

Urban property tax reform : guidelines and recommendations, Volume 1

Author:	Dillinger, William;	Collection Title:	Policy, Research, and External Affairs working papers ; no. WPS 710. Urban development
Date Stored:	2000/08/23	Document Date:	1991/06/30
Document Type:	Policy Research Working Paper	Language:	English
Major Sector:	Public Administration, Law, and Justice	Report Number:	WPS710
Sub Sectors:	Public Financial Management	SubTopics:	Urban Governance and Management; Banks & Banking Reform; Regional Governance; Municipal Financial Management; Public Sector Economics
Volume No:	1

Summary: The property tax is a potentially attractive means of financing municipal government in developing countries. As a revenue source, it can provide local government with access to a broad and expanding tax base. At present, however, yields of urban property taxes in developing countries are extremely low. In part, these low yields reflect failures in the administration of the tax. Procedural improvements alone, however, are unlikely to have a significant, sustained impact on property tax yields. This suggests that the scope of reform must be expanded to address the systems for rate setting and revaluation, and the incentives confronting administrators of the tax. The scope of reform may have to include the entire structure of local finance. Judging from recent experience, providing local government with complete autonomy over tax policy and administration does not always guarantee that the tax will be exploited effectively. Under these conditions, property tax reform can only be achieved in the context of wider restructuring in the sources of municipal revenue. By reducing the extent of arbitrary subsidies between jurisdictions and confronting local taxpayers with the cost of the services they consume, these reforms are consistent with the pursuit of the efficiency objective that is the principal justification for property tax reform.


Official Documents Official, scanned versions of documents (may include signatures, etc.)
File Type		Description	File Size (mb)

	PDF 55 pages	Official version*	3.85 (approx.)
	Text	Text version**

* The official version is derived from scanning the final, paper copy of the document and is the official,
archived version including all signatures, charts, etc.

** The text version is the OCR text of the final scanned version and is not an accurate representation of the final text.
It is provided solely to benefit users with slow connectivity.

Permanent URL for this page: http://go.worldbank.org/NSAYYQHN10