Research & Publications Office to host seminar on ‘Partisan Inequality in Property Tax Assessments: A Fiscal Burden on Political Minorities’ on 7 November
The talk will be delivered by Prof. Ankit Kalda, Indiana University
3 November, 2025, Bengaluru: The Office of Research and Publications (R&P) will host a seminar on, ‘Partisan Inequality in Property Tax Assessments: A Fiscal Burden on Political Minorities’, to be led by Prof. Ankit Kalda, Indiana University (Finance & Accounting area), at 12 pm on 7th November 2025, in Classroom K-21.
Abstract: The researchers document a political partisanship-based assessment gap that imposes a disproportionate fiscal burden on political minorities. Using property tax data matched with voter registration records across the United States, they find that political minorities – Republicans in Democratic-majority counties and Democrats in Republican-majority counties – face higher property tax assessments than the political majority within the same tax jurisdiction, despite being subject to identical tax administration and rates. This partisan assessment gap is economically significant, representing 40-50% of the previously documented racial assessment gap. In Republican counties, the gap is driven by within-neighborhood variation, while in Democratic counties, it is driven by variation across neighborhoods, enabled by higher levels of residential partisan segregation. Assessor bias contributes to these disparities, as the assessment gap disappears when assessors share the political affiliation of the minority group. Moreover, the gap’s magnitude varies with the partisan composition of county commissions – increasing with aligned political control and decreasing with minority party representation. These findings show that property tax assessments, though ostensibly neutral, become tools for redistributing fiscal burdens along partisan lines.
Speaker Profile: Dr. Ankit Kalda is an Assistant Professor of Finance and Rifkin Faculty Fellow at Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. His primary research interests include household finance, labor & finance and behavioral finance. His research addresses questions related to the determinants and consequences of household debt with a special focus on the interaction between household debt and labor markets, impact of technology on household economic decisions, and drivers of firms’ hiring and firing decisions. His work has been published in top journals and has received attention from both media and policy makers, including being cited in policy reports by the Congressional Budget Office. He received his PhD in Finance from Washington University in St Louis. Before joining the PhD program, Ankit completed his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Economics from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur.
Webpage Link: https://kelley.iu.edu/faculty-research/faculty-directory/profile.html?id=AKALDA
Research & Publications Office to host seminar on ‘Partisan Inequality in Property Tax Assessments: A Fiscal Burden on Political Minorities’ on 7 November
The talk will be delivered by Prof. Ankit Kalda, Indiana University
3 November, 2025, Bengaluru: The Office of Research and Publications (R&P) will host a seminar on, ‘Partisan Inequality in Property Tax Assessments: A Fiscal Burden on Political Minorities’, to be led by Prof. Ankit Kalda, Indiana University (Finance & Accounting area), at 12 pm on 7th November 2025, in Classroom K-21.
Abstract: The researchers document a political partisanship-based assessment gap that imposes a disproportionate fiscal burden on political minorities. Using property tax data matched with voter registration records across the United States, they find that political minorities – Republicans in Democratic-majority counties and Democrats in Republican-majority counties – face higher property tax assessments than the political majority within the same tax jurisdiction, despite being subject to identical tax administration and rates. This partisan assessment gap is economically significant, representing 40-50% of the previously documented racial assessment gap. In Republican counties, the gap is driven by within-neighborhood variation, while in Democratic counties, it is driven by variation across neighborhoods, enabled by higher levels of residential partisan segregation. Assessor bias contributes to these disparities, as the assessment gap disappears when assessors share the political affiliation of the minority group. Moreover, the gap’s magnitude varies with the partisan composition of county commissions – increasing with aligned political control and decreasing with minority party representation. These findings show that property tax assessments, though ostensibly neutral, become tools for redistributing fiscal burdens along partisan lines.
Speaker Profile: Dr. Ankit Kalda is an Assistant Professor of Finance and Rifkin Faculty Fellow at Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. His primary research interests include household finance, labor & finance and behavioral finance. His research addresses questions related to the determinants and consequences of household debt with a special focus on the interaction between household debt and labor markets, impact of technology on household economic decisions, and drivers of firms’ hiring and firing decisions. His work has been published in top journals and has received attention from both media and policy makers, including being cited in policy reports by the Congressional Budget Office. He received his PhD in Finance from Washington University in St Louis. Before joining the PhD program, Ankit completed his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Economics from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur.
Webpage Link: https://kelley.iu.edu/faculty-research/faculty-directory/profile.html?id=AKALDA