The relationship between population and residential property taxes
is not well understood. This study is an attempt to discern the relationship.
The basic questions examined are: How does population affect tax
bills? What are the short-run and long-run relationships between population
and taxes? What reasons lie behind the answers to the first two
questions?
Nearly all of a typical residential property tax bill is paid to the
three units of local government, counties, cities, and school districts.
The equation for determining the tax bill is the same for each unit of
government: Total Expenditures minus other non-property tax revenues
equals the Levy which divided by the total value of all property in the
district equals the tax rate which multiplied by the value of a residence
gives that residence's tax bill.
The relationships between each of the above variables and population
are examined to facilitate understanding of the tax-population relationship.
The model chapter provides a logical link between each variable
and population and corresponding estimating equations to assess long-run
and short-run relationships and the relative effect of population on the separate tax variables. For long-run relationships both simple linear and
quadratic functions are used with population as the explanatory variable.
For short-run equations, first difference estimates are computed.
Elasticities are computed for comparing the relative effect of population
on the tax variables.
The results obtained show that despite high R2 values the large confidence
intervals about the regression lines imply that substantial variation
is left unexplained by population variables.
Generally, levies appear to be more responsive to population than
does the value of all property as a whole resulting in a rate of growth
in the levies which exceeds that of property values. Hence, tax rates
tend to increase slightly with increases in population.
Higher residential property taxes are associated with larger populations.
This appears to be due in part to the relatively more elastic
response of residential values to population than all property values as
a whole. Taxes appear to be shifting toward residential property owners.
Finally, short-run changes in taxes and variables composing the tax
equation do not appear to be related to short-run changes in population. / Graduation date: 1979
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/25907 |
| Date | 01 March 1979 |
| Creators | Buchanan, Shepard C. |
| Contributors | Weber, Bruce A. |
| Source Sets | Oregon State University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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