Property Tax Web Series

Abstract

We document a political partisanship-based assessment gap that imposes a disproportionate fiscal burden on political minorities. In Democratic counties, Republicans face higher property tax burdens than Democrats within the same tax jurisdiction, despite being subject to identical tax administration and rates. This partisan assessment gap is economically significant, amounting to 25–50% of the racial assessment gap. The effects are primarily driven by inter-neighborhood differences rather than within-neighborhood variations and stem from disparities in assessment values rather than market values. Political polarization, differences in tax regimes and wealth, and in-consistencies in tax assessments do not explain these findings. Instead, the composition of elected county offcials contributes to our results. The higher tax burden for Republicans in Democratic counties is most pronounced in areas with predominantly Democratic county commissions and decreases as Republican representation in local government increases.

This paper was presented by Ankit Kalda (Indiana University) on November 21, 2025 as part of the 2025-2026 Syracuse-Chicago Webinar Series on Property Tax Administration and Design. Byron Lutz (Federal Reserve Board) was the discussant for this presentation.