Tax Salience, Escrow, and Support for Property Tax

20 April 2022, Version 1
This content is an early or alternative research output and has not been peer-reviewed at the time of posting.

Abstract

Scholars find that tax presentation is a key factor influencing the salience of a tax to those who pay it. We test Cabral and Hoxby’s 2012 hypothesis that homeowners who escrow their property tax payments will express more support for property tax increases than non-escrow taxpayers. Using original data collected from a mailed survey of South Carolina voters our multi-variate regression analysis shows that homeowners who escrow property taxes express more support for increasing school tax than do non-escrow payers. We also find significant knowledge limits among respondents in understanding the actual school tax costs on taxpayers in South Carolina. Most S.C. homeowners are exempt from paying property taxes for school operations, but we find that this is not widely understood. Note: This project was funded by an ASPIRE I research grant from the Office of the Vice President of Research for the University of SC system.

Keywords

Property Tax
School Funding
Behavioral Public Finance

Supplementary materials

Title
Description
Actions
Title
SC School Tax Fact Sheet
Description
Explains the tax-free status of primary residences from school millage in South Carolina.
Actions

Comments

Comments are not moderated before they are posted, but they can be removed by the site moderators if they are found to be in contravention of our Commenting Policy [opens in a new tab] - please read this policy before you post. Comments should be used for scholarly discussion of the content in question. You can find more information about how to use the commenting feature here [opens in a new tab] .
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy [opens in a new tab] and Terms of Service [opens in a new tab] apply.