Thursday, April 21, 2022
Stantcheva Presents Wealth And Taxation In America Right this moment At The OMG Transatlantic Tax Talks
Stefanie Stantcheva (Harvard; Google Scholar) presents Wealth and Taxation in america (with Sacha Dray (London College of Economics) & Camille Landais (London College of Economics)) immediately as a part of the OMG Transatlantic Tax Talks Collection (OMG = Oxford-Michigan-MIT-Munich-Georgetown):
We examine the historical past and geography of wealth accumulation within the US, utilizing newly collected historic property tax data for the reason that early 1800s. The property tax within the US was a complete tax on every kind of properties (actual property, private property, and monetary wealth), making it one of many first “wealth taxes.” Our new knowledge permits us to reconstruct wealth sequence on the metropolis, county, and state ranges over time and to review the results of property taxes on property values, migration, and funding. We first doc the long-term evolution of family wealth within the US for the reason that early 1800s, providing new fine-grained and high-frequency estimates of family wealth over an extended time period. The US had considerably decrease wealth than Europe and solely caught up with Europe after WW1, regardless of GDP per capita having been bigger than that of France or the UK for the reason that late 1870s. Second, we examine the spatial allocation of wealth within the US over the long term. The geography of wealth is extremely persistent and components associated to geography and demographics correlate strongly with wealth on the metropolis, county, and state ranges.
Lastly, we examine the function of the property tax (i.e., a “wealth tax”) on wealth accumulation, utilizing the massive variation in property tax charges throughout greater than 300 municipalities. We discover an implied elasticity of capital earnings with respect to the net-of-tax charge on earnings of about .70 after 10 years. This elasticity could be damaged down into an (intensive) elasticity of migration of about .26 and an (intensive) elasticity of per capita earnings of about .44. The intensive margin elasticity seems to be pushed partially by reporting and avoidance responses, but additionally by vital capitalization of property taxes in native actual property costs.
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2022/04/stantcheva-presents-wealth-and-taxation-in-the-united-states-today-at-the-omg-transatlantic-tax-talk.html