Property taxes are the largest source of funding for local governments in the United States, totaling more than $700 billion annually. But because of the highly fragmented nature of US local governments, property taxes are highly unequal, with local tax bases frequently varying by a factor of ten or more across distances of just a few miles--or even a single block. Using a dataset of 138 million geocoded property tax records, this project measures the extent of tax base fragmentation in the United States, identifying the metropolitan areas with the largest disparities in property taxes between jurisdictions. In addition, we identify hundreds of "municipal tax havens," municipalities with extreme concentrations of wealth that effectively operate as tax shelters for residents and corporations based there.

This talk is part of the ISR Insights Speaker Series.