مالیات بر املاک در جاده های خصوصی

Roads cover a significant fraction of the land area in many municipalities. The public provision of roads means this land is exempt from the local property tax. Transferring roads from public to private ownership would not only remove maintenance costs from city budgets, but increase potential property tax revenue as well. This paper calculates the value of the land occupied by roads in sample cities and determines the potential revenue increase if they were subject to property tax. Further calculation computes the extent to which the property tax rate could be reduced if the land values of roads were added to the tax base.

Street maintenance is a significant part of many municipal budgets. Especially in older cities, much of the infrastructure is reaching an age where replacement or significant rehabilitation will soon be needed. At the same time, with recent economic conditions the fiscal health of many city governments is in question. Raising property taxes to cover increased street maintenance needs is likely not politically feasible in harder times, and may not be economically feasible given the recent spate of foreclosures. Several alternative instruments are available to finance transportation projects. Generally, these fall into the categories of user fees or value capture. User fees are charged to drivers as tolls, and less directly as vehicle registration fees. Value capture strategies, such as impact fees and land value taxes, are charged to land owners whose parcels derive value from the accessibility provided by the street network. A third alternative is to lease or sell the transportation network to a private operator, who would manage and maintain the system and likely charge tolls in some form to cover costs. Such arrangements are becoming more common, especially for large, capital-intensive projects for which it is difficult to obtain construction funding. The most obvious effect, aside from the appearance of tolls on facilities which were previously untolled, is the transfer of the burden of maintaining the system from public agencies to private entities. Another ramification, which is the focus of this paper, is that if ownership of roads was privatized in addition to operation, the owners could be charged property taxes. This would give governments more flexibility to fund other programs, or to reduce property taxes on residents and other businesses.