Use-value assessment tax expenditures in urban areas

Use-value assessment is the practice of valuing land for property tax purposes in its current use, rather than at its full market value. This practice is widespread in the U.S. and is intended to reduce the property Lax burden on agricultural land near urban areas and slow the pace of land development. We examine the foregone property tax revenue, or tax expenditure, due to use-value assessment. Data sets fur two case studies are employed in empirical estimation of spatial models of the difference between market value and use value, providing the analytic basis for estimates of tax expenditures. (C) 2000 Academic Press.