The Evolution of the Property Tax: A Study of the Relation between Public Finance and Political Theory

Abstract

The property tax has perplexed and frustrated economists for decades, and for most of this century it has been denounced as an unjustifiable relic of the Middle Ages, which has unaccountably survived into modern times. The property tax is in fact the oldest tax in any modern system of public finance, and because of its age it has been associated with both modern and premodern tax philosophies. This essay explores the political context of the property tax in its medieval and modern settings--i.e., before and after the seventeenth-century revolution in political philosophy that gave birth to liberalism and "political economy." That revolution altered our understanding of the purpose of the state, bringing corresponding changes to our understanding of public finance. The modern property tax is a legacy of that revolution. But the modern property tax is mostly a legal facade, concealing a very different tax behind it. The de facto property tax, made possible by decentralized administration and by informal and illegal assessment procedures, carries forward into modern times much of the tax in its premodern form. When Seligman and other economists denounced the property tax as "medieval," therefore, they were more right than they knew. It is argued here that many of the problems associated with contemporary property taxation are traceable to this confusion between the "legal" and the "real" property taxes, and that the public might be better served by a tax openly based on premodern principles.