Who Pays for Property Tax Limitation, and Who Benefits?

The purpose of this brief is to review what is known about the effects of property tax limitation on how we pay for local government. Many of the most vigorous debates about property tax limitation concern its impact on other aspects of social life—critics have charged Proposition 13, for example, with distorting land-use decisions and reducing the quality of public services ranging from policing to public schools—but whatever the indirect effects of property tax limitations on such outcomes, they are generally assumed to exert those effects by changing how governments tax and spend.