Financing local public goods is a major issue in many communities, especially those that have experienced rapid growth. This paper analyzes problems associated with locally collected real property taxes where the real property tax base is only revaluated at long time intervals. Using counties in North Carolina as the subject of the analysis, we find that effective real property tax rates fall between revaluations. We calculate that a system of taxing market values of real property at a constant legislated tax rate would have yielded additional annual revenues of $320 million for North Carolina counties over 1980 to 1995.
