Study of rates in Hong Kong : implications for the mainland property tax reform

Abstract

Enlightened by the theory of Tiebout and Hamilton about property tax as a benefit tax and the new view reformulated by George R. Zodrow and Peter Mieszkowski, this dissertation seeks to study the capitalization and regressivity of Government Rates in Hong Kong, which have already existed for 165 years in the city and are equivalent to property tax mentioned in western literature. Since both Hong Kong and Mainland China share the same structure of land lease system, it is meaningful to study the implications of Rates in the property market in Hong Kong at the juncture of a new wave of property tax reform in China commencing with the latest property tax experiment in two major cities: Chongqing and Shanghai.

This dissertation first reviews the history and describes the roles of Government Rates in the financial revenue and expenditure system of the Hong Kong Government to get a clear picture of where Rates are from, how they are collected and where they have been spent on. Meanwhile, effects of Rates and public expenditures on local residential property values of different classes during the year 1974-2008 are examine by applying time series of housing price index, percentage of Rates charge, and public expenditure, etc. Furthermore, in order to test whether Hamilton’s intra-jurisdictional capitalization exists, transaction data of the year 2000 from EPRC are employed to examine whether low income housing (small units) sells at relatively higher price compared with high income housing (large units) due to the fiscal surplus. The empirical results show no capitalization of Rates but capitalization of public goods exists and the Rates payment is shifted forward into the housing price. We find out that Rates in Hong Kong is not a capital tax, and actually it is a benefit tax and user fee paid for public goods. The last part of the dissertation concludes valuable lessons for the property tax reform in Mainland China.

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