Sub-metropolitan tax competition with household and capital mobility

This paper investigates the efficiency properties of tax competition between sub-metropolitan jurisdictions when capital, residents and workers are mobile, and both households and firms compete for local land markets. We analyze two decentralized equilibria: (1) With a local tax on residents and two separate local taxes on capital and land inputs, efficiency is achieved and the existence of a marginal fiscal cost due to residents’ mobility is revealed; (2) Combination of the taxes on capital and land inputs into a single business property tax leads local authorities to charge inefficiently high taxation on capital. We show that capital mobility induces a reduction in the business land taxation and local public inputs are used to offset the distorting effects of the property tax, accounting for the distorting impact of workers’ mobility.