Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh ran a split-rate property tax for most of the 20th century and sharply raised its land rate in 1979–80 — the setting for the most-cited US study of land taxation.
Overview
Pittsburgh has one of the longest histories of split-rate property taxation in the United States, having taxed land at a higher rate than buildings from 1913 onward. It is best known as the setting for Oates & Schwab's landmark 1997 study of land value taxation.
The 1979–80 Reform
Facing fiscal pressure, Pittsburgh sharply increased its land-tax rate around 1979–80, reaching roughly five times the rate on buildings — the most aggressive split-rate regime in the country at the time. The 1980s that followed saw a marked rise in building activity even as the city's steel economy declined, the central finding of the Oates & Schwab analysis.
Repeal
Pittsburgh abandoned the split-rate system in 2001, largely due to problems with an outdated, inequitable assessment system (a property-reassessment controversy), not a failure of the tax principle itself — a cautionary tale about the importance of good land assessment.
See Also
Sources
- Oates & Schwab (1997), "The Impact of Urban Land Taxation: The Pittsburgh Experience" — wiki summary
- Zhou Yang (2021), "Split-Rate Taxation Impacts on Tax Base," Lincoln Institute. PDF