Sistemas del impuesto predial en América Latina y el Caribe (2nd Edition)

Summary

The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy announced the second edition of Sistemas del impuesto predial en América Latina y el Caribe ("Property Tax Systems in Latin America and the Caribbean"), edited by Luis Quintanilla and Cláudia De Cesare. The first edition, published a decade earlier, covered nine countries; the second edition expands coverage to 13: the original nine — Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Peru, Uruguay — plus four new additions — Bolivia, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay. This is a regional-survey counterpart to the wiki's existing coverage of Franzsen & McCluskey's Property Tax in Africa, filling a comparable gap for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Key Finding: Two Decades of Stagnant Revenue

The book's headline statistic tracks property tax revenue as a share of regional GDP from 2000 to 2022:

• 2000: 0.35% of GDP
• 2018 (peak): 0.41% of GDP
• 2022: 0.38% of GDP

Despite an average growth rate over the two decades, the region's property tax take has remained essentially flat in relative terms — nowhere close to the roughly 1%+ of GDP the book reports for OECD countries over 2012–2021, putting Latin American and Caribbean collection at roughly one-third of the OECD level.

COVID-19 impact. Eight of the thirteen countries surveyed saw declining property tax revenue in 2021 relative to 2019, which the book attributes to pandemic-era relief measures — deferrals, discounts, and amnesty programs — rather than a structural change in the tax base.

Recommendations

The book calls for more standardized, collaborative property-tax systems across the region; transparent residential-rate adjustments tied to ability to pay; and stronger transparency measures generally — echoing the administrative-capacity themes this wiki documents for other developing-region property-tax surveys.

Relation to the Georgist Case

This is squarely in the wiki's developing-country property-tax-capacity cluster — directly comparable to Franzsen & McCluskey's African survey and the World Bank's cross-country determinants study — and reinforces the same conclusion from a third region: recurrent property/land taxation is a large, persistently under-used revenue source in most of the developing world, not because the tax base is small but because administrative capacity, political will, and valuation infrastructure lag. The stagnant 0.35–0.41% of GDP figure, essentially flat despite two decades of regional growth, is consistent with this wiki's existing Ecuador case study, which examines LVT specifically in one of the thirteen countries this broader survey covers.

Nuances and Limits

• Announcement-level source. This page is based on the Lincoln Institute's own announcement of the book, not the book itself, which the wiki has not obtained or read directly. The GDP-share figures and country list are reported as stated in the announcement; any finer detail (country-by-country breakdowns, specific policy recommendations by country) would require the book itself.
• No land-value-specific breakdown. The 0.35–0.41% figure is for property tax broadly (land and improvements together, as is standard in most of the region's systems), not a land-only base — consistent with how this statistic should be read across the wiki's other developing-country property-tax coverage.

Bears On

• Research: Franzsen & McCluskey: Property Tax in Africa — the direct regional-survey counterpart for a different continent.
• Research: World Bank: Determinants of Property Tax Revenue — the cross-country empirical framework this regional case sits within.
• Research: Tubío-Sánchez & Reyes-Bueno: Loja, Ecuador — a country-level LVT case study from within this book's 13-country scope.
• Organization: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy

See Also

• Lincoln Institute of Land Policy
• Franzsen & McCluskey: Property Tax in Africa
• World Bank: Determinants of Property Tax Revenue
• Tubío-Sánchez & Reyes-Bueno: Loja, Ecuador

Sources

1. Luis Quintanilla & Cláudia De Cesare (eds.), Sistemas del impuesto predial en América Latina y el Caribe, 2nd edition, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2026 — announcement fetched and read 2026-08-14. lincolninst.edu — used for the book's title, editors, 13-country coverage (original nine plus Bolivia, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay), the 2000/2018/2022 GDP-share figures, the OECD 2012–2021 comparison, the COVID-19 revenue-decline finding, and the book's standardization/ transparency recommendations. Publisher-announcement level source, not the book itself (B-claim for the reported statistics; the underlying book was not independently read this session).