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Assessor Incentives and Property Assessment
Author(s) -
Ross Justin M.
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
southern economic journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.762
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 2325-8012
pISSN - 0038-4038
DOI - 10.4284/sej.2011.77.3.776
Subject(s) - incentive , socioeconomic status , property tax , variance (accounting) , politics , value (mathematics) , property (philosophy) , economics , government (linguistics) , public economics , panel data , econometrics , microeconomics , political science , sociology , statistics , accounting , tax reform , law , mathematics , demography , population , philosophy , linguistics , epistemology
While typically not a formulator of policy, property assessors are likely sensitive to political incentives, since they are either directly elected to their office or appointed by another elected official. This article estimates a model that is motivated by the assumption that assessors seek to maximize political support in a manner that affects the assessment‐to‐sales price ratio. With panel data from a 2001 to 2006 series of sales price ratio studies in Virginia cities and counties, a fixed effects variance‐decomposition regression reveals a variety of socioeconomic and political variables that bias the assessed value away from fair market value. In addition to finding influential socioeconomic factors, the results indicate that elected assessors underassess more than appointed assessors. Furthermore, it appears assessors try to export the property tax onto commercial property, and assessors in districts with higher measures of local government fiscal stress tend to give higher assessments.