ATCOR

Si bien el término "ATCOR" fue mencionado por primera vez por Mason Gaffney, ^{[ 3 ]} el concepto fue mencionado por primera vez por John Locke (1632-1704) más de trescientos años antes. ^{[ 4 ] : ​​2} John Locke escribió en 1691:

En un país cuyo principal recurso es la tierra, es inútil esperar que la carga pública del gobierno recaiga sobre otra cosa; allí, a la larga, terminará. El comerciante (haga lo que pueda) no podrá soportarla, el jornalero no, y por lo tanto, el terrateniente debe hacerlo: y si le conviene más hacerlo asignándola directamente, donde finalmente se asentará, o esperando que le llegue mediante la disminución de sus rentas, que una vez caídas, como todos saben, no se recuperan fácilmente, que lo considere. ^{[ 5 ]}

Los fisiócratas se centraron extensamente en la productividad agrícola, desarrollando sus teorías dentro de la economía agraria del Reino de Francia en el siglo XVIII. Cabe señalar también que, si bien François Quesnay (1694-1774) creía que la economía agrícola era superior a la economía mercantil, sus contemporáneos fisiócratas no compartían esta opinión. ^{[ 3 ]} Gaffney escribe en sus notas sobre los fisiócratas en relación con ATCOR:

They did not view this tax shift as a real shift that would raise the tax burden on landowners, because they believed other kinds of taxes are shifted to landowners anyway. You can't squeeze blood out of a stone, they reasoned, so there is only one true taxable surplus, and that is rent, the Net Product of land. For an acronym, we will use ATCOR (All Taxes Come Out of Rent) for this Physiocratic doctrine of tax incidence. Mirabeau's Theory of Taxation, 1760, spelled it out.^[3]

Mason Gaffney wrote in his 2007 paper that Adam Smith (1723-1790) "deplored the 'indolence of landowners'" and referenced the concept from his physiocratic forebears:

Adam Smith, a student of Turgot and Quesnay, deplored the 'indolence of landowners' that keeps them from seeing the principle, for then they would see that they hurt themselves the most by shunting taxes off land and onto labor, capital, trade, and production. Taxes on useful activity are shifted to rents, he observed, and more: such taxes impose excess burdens that are also shifted to rents...^[6]

Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) argued within his famous treatise An Essay on the Principle of Population, that in the short-term, taxes on agricultural activity fall on labor and capital—but in the long-run the tax ultimately falls on rent.^[4]:28 In a letter to David Ricardo dated to 1815, Malthus wrote:^[4]:29

[...] I think however there are often cases where taxes are thrown off on the landlord, and I meant to say that those which had not already been thrown off on the consumer would then be thrown off on the landlord.^[7]

Real-estate appraiser H. Bronson Cowan explained in the June 1953 issue of The Henry George News how shifts in land value after the imposition of a land tax (which he referred to as a site-value tax) will not always decrease the capital value of land, unless other taxes have been cut or the tax base fully shifted onto land.^[8]

Mason Gaffney (1923-2020) was the first economist to name the concept, labelling it ATCOR in 1998.^[3] Taxes on labor (wages) and capital (interest), he wrote, did not increase the size of the revenue pie, but took away from what would become rent's (land's Net Product) complete aggregate, consummating all of the potential taxable income within a locational jurisdiction.

In Gaffney's 1998 excerpt, The Physiocratic Concept of ATCOR, based on his previous lecture notes, he outlines the basic logic of the economic concept:

A. Land supply fixed, capital and labor elastic, demand elastic. The thesis that all taxes are shifted to landowners follows logically from two premises. One, after-tax interest rates are determined by world markets, so the local supply of capital is perfectly elastic at a fixed, after-tax rate. Two, labor has been reduced to so low a level that it cannot bear any more tax burden. Anyone may test the premises by observation.^[1]:2

He then highlights the history of economic thought behind the concept:

B. Venerable tradition of ATCOR in the history of economic thought:

• Physiocrats, preceded by John Locke and Jacob Vanderlint
• Adam Smith on "indolence of landowners"
• Paul Douglas; Bronson Cowan; Ebenezer Howard; David Bradford, et al., 1992 NTJ; Dick Netzer (with caveats);
• Others?^[1]:4

Next, Gaffney highlights academic hostility to the concept:

C. Muddying the waters of theory.

Forward shifting of property tax, a la Musgrave. This shift requires our assuming the tax is imposed on just one land use, usually housing, in one small jurisdiction. It is what Howard Jarvis seized on and used to promise tenants that lowering property taxes would automatically lower their rents, since property owners, as he put it, do "not pay one cent" in property taxes, but shift them all to tenants. As soon as Prop. 13 passed, rents shot upwards, and have never looked back except in particular micro-markets like cyclical Silicon Valley.

This is one result of displacing production theory by price theory in economic doctrines. In production theory you would assume elastic demand, and focus on the effect on factor proportions (changing productive processes and products, a la Kneese and Bowers).

• Fixed capital supply. Harberger; Seligman; Harriss
• La mayoría de los economistas tergiversan la regla de Ramsey . McLure y Zodrow ; Lindsey , y la mayoría de los textos sobre finanzas públicas son ejemplos de ello. Entre las excepciones notables se encuentran el propio Ramsey , Pigou, quien lo inspiró, y Stiglitz . ^{[ 1 ] : 4}

Gaffney finaliza sus notas con un resumen definitivo sobre ATCOR:

La capacidad de generar ingresos a partir de la tierra, cuando se sustituye por otras bases impositivas, es comparable a los ingresos corrientes. Debido a los efectos de eficiencia y renovación, bien podría ser mayor. ^{[ 1 ] : 4}

El argumento principal a favor de ATCOR comienza con el hecho de que la tierra económica es finita y esencial para la actividad económica; en otras palabras, la tierra tiene una oferta inelástica y una demanda elástica. ^{[ 1 ] : 2} Dado que la oferta de tierra es fija, cualquier reducción de impuestos sobre el trabajo y el capital resultará en un aumento marginal en el valor de la tierra. Por ejemplo, el ahorro de ingresos derivado de pagar menos impuestos sobre la renta permite una mayor capacidad de endeudamiento a corto plazo, así como un aumento absoluto en el valor de la tierra a largo plazo. ^{[ 9 ]} Esto significa que los ingresos provenientes de la tierra, en última instancia, absorben la mayor parte de las ganancias de ingresos causadas por las reducciones de impuestos sobre el trabajo y el capital a largo plazo.

La oferta de trabajo se ve afectada por eventos como la migración humana , los cambios en la tasa de empleo y la disponibilidad de puestos de trabajo . Por estas razones, el trabajo tiende a ser altamente móvil a largo plazo y, por lo tanto, tiene una oferta altamente elástica, especialmente en comparación con la oferta perfectamente inelástica de la tierra. ^{[ 10 ]} La elasticidad del trabajo se puede demostrar en el modelo de Tiebout .

De manera similar, la oferta de capital puede considerarse perfectamente elástica a largo plazo debido al tipo de interés real , especialmente en comparación con la tierra.

En consecuencia, la base impositiva no desaparece cuando se reducen los impuestos sobre el trabajo, el capital y el consumo. En cambio, la mayoría de las reducciones de impuestos ^{[ a ]} provocan un aumento en los valores de alquiler de la tierra y en los valores del capital de la tierra, lo que puede generar más impuestos de los propietarios de tierras. ^{[ 10 ]}

Los principios de ATCOR pueden observarse con otras formas de tributación, como lo explica Gaffney: ^{[ 1 ] : 2 [ 6 ]}

Lowering the corporate income tax rate raises stock prices. Lowering interest rates raises real estate prices. Commercial rents are multipartite, so a lower share of gross revenue means a higher fixed rent. Oil leases are multipartite, and a higher fixed royalty rate means lower bonus bids. Wartime taxes depress land prices, while peace dividends let them rise again. Land booms follow a long history of peace dividends worldwide. The Resource Curse Effect: an influx of mineral revenues, obviating other taxes, leads to land booms. The remarkable productivity of the U.S. income tax when wages were exempt, 1916-30, and we paid for World War I with less deficit finance than any other belligerent. The utility-rate effect: lower rates mean higher rents and land prices, as observed in practice and explained in theory by Hotelling, Vickrey, Stiglitz, Feldstein, and others.

The population of Cleveland, Ohio grew 109% from 1900 to 1920, with most of the city at the time being under the administration of GeorgistsTom L. Johnson (1901-1909) and Newton D. Baker (1911-1916).^[11]:16

In 1909, with the help of William Somers as Chief Clerk—who had previously provided Johnson with a standard unit of land assessment back in 1901—they both managed to raise assessments from $180m to $500m with their new data set. As Gaffney puts it in 2006:

Johnson and Somers analyzed property assessments, and found that assessors had been undervaluing holdings in rich neighborhoods, and overvaluing those in poor.^[11]:16

Back in 1901, Johnson set up a tax school sponsored by his city administration to educate and persuade Cleveland's public to shift property taxes from capital to land alone. The tax school eventually ceased its operations when the city's largest landowners disapproved of its existence.^[11]:17

After an interim two-year period without a single taxer as mayor, Newton Baker was elected in 1911. Both mayors presided over rapid population growth in Cleveland, which doubled within the first two decades of the 1900s. A massive construction boom and subsequent high land values followed, which were enough to cover the treasury losses from exempting improvements at the time.

Under the mayoralty of Georgist Edward Robeson Taylor (1907-1910), San Francisco rapidly recovered from the 1906 earthquake and managed to maintain its population growth. At the time, most of the tax base was land value, which was unaffected by the earthquake and subsequent fires.^[11]:25 The rebuilding of the city-county and the financing of subsequent public works were thus supported and facilitated by the taxable capacity of land. James Rolph, the mayor from 1911 to 1930, maintained the land-taxing power of the city government and spent the revenue on improving public goods.^[11]:26

In September 1920, New York GovernorAl Smith (1923-1928) declared a housing crisis in New York City—a crisis that included zero vacancies, high rents, and soaring evictions—and called a special session of the New York State Legislature to find a remedy.^[11]:6 During that same month, Governor Al Smith called to exempt investments into new capital improvements from property taxation. The legislature advanced his proposal and tailored the bill specifically to NYC with its "local option" feature.^[11]:7 The new local law caused an immediate boom in housing construction and massive population growth. Despite the law exempting new improvements from taxation expiring in 1931, land value remained subject to taxation, and local housing construction continued even during the Great Depression, all the way to 1940.^[11]:7

Although the NYC-amended property tax exempted new improvements, the city's total tax income actually increased, suggesting ATCOR's validity. As a committee led by Clarence Stein put it in 1924:

There has been a tremendous increase in land assessments since 1920 in all the boroughs. ... The resumption of building has greatly increased the taxable value of the land, which is not included in the exemption. ... Tax exemption is creating aggregate taxable values to an extent heretofore unknown in the history of any municipality.^[11]:12