Property Tax in Latin America

Property tax has been introduced in a large majority of countries, but is structured and administered in a great variety of ways in different jurisdictions. Little information is currently available regarding the performance of property taxes in Latin America. More importantly, even the public authorities of these countries have difficulty bringing together knowledge of the main characteristics of the systems and of the reform initiatives that are underway.

In order to contribute to the organization and dissemination of information in this area, published are the results of a study involving a comparative analysis of property tax in Latin America. The study is financed by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

The relevance of the study resides in the fact that it will help increase awareness of the ways in which property tax is administered in Latin America. The comparison between countries, regions and localities is significant to the degree that it contributes toward the identification of areas where improvements need to be made. It is important to note that the systematic internal evaluation of the tax is essential for an understanding of the factors that lead to changes in its performance in different periods, thus allowing for the monitoring of governmental activity by public agencies and civil society.

The data collected, the results of the analyses carried out, and the links to access the legislation that refers to the different jurisdictions investigated are available here. The expansion of the database will be carried out through the incorporation of new members to the network, and the updating of the data of each jurisdiction must be carried out, on an annual basis, by the members of the network. The information referring to the past will be stored, to allow the study of the evolution of existing systems. Access to the analyses, aggregate data, legislation and other available materials will be maintained.

Lincoln Institute Vertical Equity App

Vertical equity in property tax assessment requires that assessment levels remain consistent over the range of real estate values, with high-value and low-value properties exhibiting the same ratio of assessment to market value.

On a national level, findings of widespread vertical inequity in property tax assessments—with low-priced properties assessed at a higher percentage of market value than high-priced properties—have challenged assessment offices across the US to measure and evaluate the level of vertical equity in assessment rolls.

The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy Vertical Equity App is designed to provide assessment offices with the capacity to undertake this statistical study and the ability to communicate the results effectively. It allows assessors to easily analyze vertical equity using six different approaches:

• assessment to sale ratio (ASR);
• coefficient of dispersion (COD);
• price related differential (PRD), the price related bias (PRB);
• Spearman’s rank order correlation; and
• Gini measures.

Graphic displays and an overall summary allow these results to be shared and communicated more easily than would be possible with computational data alone.