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Public Finance Initiative:
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See the numerous tables proving historical
and comparative information regarding Missouri taxes
»Click here
New! See the pre-introduction version of
our Living Guide to Missouri's Property Tax that will bring together
description of the current laws and practices, resulting data, special
analysis of issues and options and major research results.
»Click
here
The Public Finance Initiative conducts research to examine the
policies – and the administration that implements them --
regarding governmental revenue and expenditures at the state and
local level. The Public Finance Initiative aims to produce and communicate
objective, high quality research that informs policy makers, administrators
and other interested parties as well as raise new questions worthy
of future study. Our projects evaluate various components of Missouri
law and implementation, as well as practices and results in other
states in order to bring the benefit of comparative knowledge to
Missouri’s policy makers and administrators.
The field of public finance concerns itself with all aspects of
governmental revenue generation, budgeting and spending at all levels
of government. Current we give primary attention to the following
topical areas:
- Property Tax Policy and Administration: Our
major research emphasis as examined Missouri’s property
tax system, both at the local and at the state level. While more
than 99% of the revenue goes to local governments and while most
assessments and tax rates are set locally, state policy governs
what can and cannot be done.
- Education Finance: Integrally related to the
property tax is the issue of education finance. Public education
is primarily funded by a combination of local property taxes and
state funding. The amount contributed by the state is affected
by local assessments and statewide equalization. Therefore, besides
being an important topic in its own right, education finance overlaps
with our work regarding property tax policy and implementation.
- State & Local Tax Revenue and Policy:
In addition to our focus on the property tax and education finance,
we have also examined other aspects of Missouri tax policy. Our
current efforts have resulted in the availability of a substantial
number of data tables which can be found on this website. Additional
projects with more description and analysis are anticipated in
the forthcoming year.
- State Fiscal Outlook: Another topic related
to tax revenue and policy is the financial outlook of the state.
This has been an important topic over the past decade, and work
on this topic is currently underway. Material will begin to appear
in our email news and on the website by the 2nd quarter of 2008.
- Property Value Trends: While we do not currently
anticipate this being a major focus, the current state of Missouri’s
housing market has prompted us to begin additional work providing
information and analysis via our email news and on our website
during the 2nd quarter of 2008.
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