City Seminar on China local property tax system

Prof Yilin Hou, Professor of the Department of Public Administration and International Affairs, and Maxwell School’s Tenth Decade Faculty Scholar at Syracuse University, USA, gave a talk titled “Local Property Tax for China: Scheme Design, Implementation Strategies, and Potential Impacts” on 16th December 2017 at City Seminar.

The seminar explained the reasons why the real property tax is crucially needed in the present China and how property tax is important to the country’s tax system. It also discussed a set of six principles that are needed when designing and evaluating the tax system. Finally, Prof Hou presented an empirical study of a proposed tax scheme, and several strategies that are useful in China’s context for adopting the property tax, given the conundrums the government has been struggling with. 

Prof Hou was the Stanley W. Shelton Professor of Public Finance at the University of Georgia (2009-2013). Since 2013, he has been a professor at the Department of Public Administration and International Affairs, the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs of Syracuse University. He is now a Maxwell School’s Tenth Decade Faculty Scholar. His fields of expertise are public finance and public budgeting. And his research interests are fiscal policy, public budgeting, and intergovernmental fiscal relations as related to the core of development and governance. He is well known for his theoretical and empirical research on the design, mechanisms, and impacts of budget stabilization funds and balanced budget requirements in the United States.

In recent years, Prof Hou has been engaged in designing a local property tax system for Mainland China and conducting related empirical research. His next project is to examine the interaction of local debt and local revenues in China.

About City Seminar 
The City Seminar 香港席明納 was initiated by Prof Houmin Yan, Dean of the College, with an aim to discuss topics together (席Xí), to understand such topics in depth (明Míng), and to gain something of value from the discussions (納Nà). Professors and/or scholars are invited to explore a wide range of topics during the series.

For more information about past and upcoming seminars, please visit the City Seminar website.