Property taxation in France

Abstract

In France, as in a number of other countries, there are many forms of property taxes and several levels of government to raise them. But there are reasons to expect Ile de France to be representative of France. The importance of local land taxes in France can be related to local taxation, to property taxation in general, to total taxes in France, and to the market value of the property taxed. The main feature – largely ignored by most theorists – appears to be the very large interjurisdictional disparities in terms of tax bases. The large intercommunal disparities between tax bases and tax yields explain why commune taxes do not play a key role in the financing of local public services in France. Since these subsidies are much more even, and in part inversely related to local tax bases, the disparities in per capita revenues between communes are much smaller than disparities in per capita local taxes.